Three Churches In Le Havre

I mentioned a train accident that was local to the Strasbourg area - here's an air crash on Mont Sainte Odile that truly shocked the Alsace region. There is a memorial on the mountain, I should visit and pay respects some day.

An alternative to Diesel: the Baureihe 563

More and more of these trains have appeared in the Offenburg area recently. Technically, I could be talking about both of the trains above because I'd never seen a Baureihe 218 locomotive (right) before, though over 400 were built in the 70s, but I am talking about the train on the left: the Baureihe 563.

5 is an unusual first digit for a German train type. Locomotives start with a 1 or a 2, for electric and Diesel power respectively, while passenger-carrying multiple units start with a 4 or a 6, again for electric and Diesel power respectively. Evidently, as seen above, these trains can run on non-electrified lines, but they are not Diesel multiple units - they are battery-electric multiple units.

Part of the Siemens Mireo family, the Mireo Plus B can run on electric power either from the overhead cable, or from the onboard batteries. The manufacturer states that the train can run between 80 and 120 km on battery power before needing a recharge from overhead cable, typically at a terminal station. This makes this train ideal for relatively short runs, such as those seen around Offenburg, the central station of the Ortenau area. As such, they are becoming more common, running local services for regional operator SWEG, indifferently on non-electrified lines like the one to Oberkirch, or electrified lines such as the picturesque Schwarzwaldbahn.

I know that Japan and the UK (link to Jago Hazzard's review of the GWR Class 230 and a quick overview of the BEMU topic) have also recently (re)introduced BEMUs. France hasn't really got on-board with this yet, as far as I know. Instead, they have built lots of bi-mode trains (mentioned at the end of the post), which have electric motors which can be powered by overhead cables or by an on-board Diesel engine.

The conference went well, as far as I can tell, so here are a couple of low-sun views of Kashihara's preserved Edo-period area, Imai-chô, as an outro. The first building seems to be operating as an art gallery (maybe?), while the other is a neat little temple. Both are on the same street, 大工町筋, which Google Translate says could be Daiku-chô suji or Daiku-machi suji... or it could be something else, I don't remember reading the name myself on site.

Different place next.

Space Port Kii (from a distance)

Japanese company Space One has been in the news recently for their second attempt at launching their rocket, Kairos - for Kii-based Advanced & Instant ROcket System; as far as acronyms go, I'd give it a 5/10, it's rather long-winded but has some good ideas at the right moments. The rocket, designed to be a cheaper option for lighter satellites, unfortunately didn't make it into orbit, losing control after 95 seconds.

The launch site is located on the North-East edge of Kushimoto, Honshû's southernmost city, its entrance building visible from the railway line. The action area is further into the woods, by the coast. I didn't visit the site obviously, but the entrance and some support posters in Kushimoto town were hints of the project's presence. They have a neat little mascot too, a space puppy!

Sangaku Saturday #5

This is it, we've reached our first full sangaku problem! (At least one that I've seen on a real-life tablet.)

We set up the tools in previous posts, so I'll let you work this one out by yourselves: given two circles which are tangent to each other and tangent to a same line, what can you say about the radii of the three smaller, light-coloured circles?

200 km/h push-pull trains

While Germany has recent double-deck train carriages, the Dostos shown previously being built in the 2000s, and updated versions still being produced, France made its last carriages in the 1980s, including Corail cars for inter-city services. But their use was curtailed by the development of the high-speed network.

Some sets were given push-pull ability, with a driving cab at one end that can control the locomotive at the other - the lead car above being a renovated B5uxh: second-class seating, 5 compartments, air-conditioned, driving cab, disabled access. These have found a new lease of life in regional transport, especially in the East, as the straight and flat Alsace line from Strasbourg to Basel allows these 200 km/h-capable carriages to stretch their legs. The "TER 200" puts Strasbourg only 80 minutes from Switzerland (wink-wink-nudge-nudge for a future trip).

The usual motors for these sets are BB 26000 "Sybic" locomotives built in the 1990s, powerful enough to get them to their top speed. While not at top speed in this setting, probably running at 100 km/h on the slower line to the Lorraine region, they still feel like very big trains when they go by.

Other push-pull trains exist in Alsace, with smaller locos and carriages rejoining the fleet for the planned Réseau Express Métropolitain Européen. However, most passengers trains everywhere in France now are covered by multiple units, especially since bi-mode units like the Régiolis shown below, have appeared. These are capable of running on electric power or with a Diesel engine, making them as flexible as can be.

To rebuild or not to rebuild? The case of Fujiwara-kyô

While travelling along the Rhine, we've covered a few castles which have been rebuilt and repurposed, unlike many forts in Alsace (links to some of those in that post). In Japan, the rebuilding of castle keeps to house museums was common after the Second World War, though some have remained ruin sites (further links in there). But what about a whole Imperial palace - scratch that, an entire capital?

Well, let's not get too excited: Kashihara, which was the Imperial capital for just 16 years between 694 and 710, has not rebuilt the old palace. By the time excavations began in the early 20th century, this area to the East of the town was farmland, and actually locating the lost palace and city was part of the problem.

It turns out Kashihara was the first city to be planned in the Chinese style: a grand palace at its heart, and a grid of parallel and perpendicular streets around it. In 710, the capital was dismantled and moved to Nara, before moving again to Kyôto in the late 8th century - and the grid street pattern can be found there, with numbered parallels going North to South (Nijô, Sanjô, Shijô...).

Today, the site of palace buildings are marked with these arrays of pillars (photo above with Miminashi-yama in the background), and a small museum sits on the side. There don't appear to be any plans to develop further, unlike what has been done at the palace site in Nara, which we can talk about next time.

Nijô-jô

In my experience, Nijô Castle in Kyôto is one of the most unusual in the Japanese castle landscape, in that the main focus of the conservation and tourist attraction is on a palace, the Ni-no-maru Goten, rather than a dungeon (whether reconstructed or original). It is true that, as the Tokugawa shôgun's residence in the Emperor's back yard, it was a focal point of Edo-period politics.

The palace sits behind a grand gate, decorated with lots of gold and colours. And as all noble residences from the Edo period go, there's a vast, carefully crafted garden on the side, complete with tea houses.

But all this is part of the Ni-no-maru, the area around the Hon-maru main keep. Given that the mountains around Kyôto are largely occupied by temples and shrines, there's not much of a height advantage to be gained in the city, to the point where, when the Hon-maru burned down in the 1780s, nothing was rebuilt, it was left bare!

Eerily, the Tokugawa shôgun's Kyôto castle has a similar story to the one in Edo: there was a keep, but it was destroyed during the Edo period and wasn't rebuilt, and both castle grounds were transferred to the Imperial Estate at the start of the Meiji era. It was in the 1880s that the Hon-maru palace was built, in the space the Tokugawas had left vacant.

Your typical Breton winter weather...

11 years ago, our group of friends was celebrating New Year on the coast of South Brittany. It was a windy time, sometimes even stormy (the drive back a day or two later was possibly the most dangerous I've ever done), and it made for some impressive shots of waves breaking at Port aux Moines.

Temples on the high street: Kyôto Teramachi and Shinkyôgoku

A typical Japanese covered high street, right? Yes, there are lots of shops left and right, but this is Kyôto, a millennial capital and centre of cultural and religious tradition in Japan. So what happens when a modern high street encounters a centuries-old temple, bearing in mind that it would be very bad form to ask the priests to sell up?

Well you leave the temple alone and build around it. So, in between the big name drugstores, Animate, clothes shops and cafés lined with the street's signature bricks and tile floor, here's the entrance to Seishin-in, with traditional wooden doors and tile roofing. It is also just visible in the first picture - see if you can notice it.

Seigan-ji is easier to spot, further illustrating the contrast. Online maps show that this temple even has a cemetery in the middle of the next block, completely encircled by shopping streets and businesses.

It's a similar situation for Tenshô-ji, though, this far up the high street, the commercial tissue becomes less dense. These temples seem a bit larger and own more land. Still, we've gone from a towering, mineral, covered street in the top photo, to an open path with low buildings and plenty of vegetation, with no transition.

These scenes of coexistence fascinated me when I first visited Kyôto in 2016, with a hotel in this area, so it was great to see them again on my brief return to the city in 2023. More fascinating still is the fact that one of these "just off the high street" temples is not only very old, but hugely historically significant... and I'm yet to mention it!