Japanese road trains
The other day a nice nikomimi walked up to me and said "Goshujin-sama, will you please post more about trains".... in an non-imaginary world it was a member who believe herself to have catears who said "please post more train posts". Either way I couldn't resist such a request and came up with something interesting.
This picture is taken right outside the station Hamaōtsu (浜大津駅) in Ōtsu. The station is used by the Keihan (京阪) private railroad and connects the two lines Keishin and Ishiyama Sakamoto. Ishiyama Sakamoto goes north-south along the west coast of lake Biwa while Keishin connects Ōtsu with Kyoto. The latter is the interesting one here. The line opened at the 5th of May 1913 (another source says 1912?) to connect Kyoto with Ōtsu. At that time it was already possible to go by train between the two towns, but because there is a mountain in between the railroad went around it and hence took a great detour. Keihan decided to make a point to point connection using the shortest possible track. In order not to demolish a whole lot of buildings they decided to place the railroad on streets through the two towns. This may seem like an odd decision today but I know that it was a fairly common solution in USA before cars took over the streets. Today none of the road tracks remains in Kyoto and the line is shorter than it used to be. It goes underground and ends at a station which is shared with the Kyoto subway. The Ōtsu end still has 500 metres of tracks through the streets. Ishiyama Sakamoto also has some tracks in the streets.
Both lines are classified as railroads and not trams, which they are sometimes declared to be on various webpages. There is a legal difference and the most noteworthy difference is real railroads puts up red flashing lights whenever cars can cross the tracks.
A few live action recordings from youtube
Going from Kyoto to Ōtsu followed by some outdoor recordings
Northbound Sakamoto train
Southbound Sakamoto train
Now you may think "where is Ōtsu anyway?". Well a little help to those who were sleeping in history class and missed this imperial city.
If you go to Hamaotsu you can walk to the harbour (it's a few hundred meters) and with a bit of luck you might see this ship
It's Michigan, which sails lake Biwa. It looks fake to me though. The lack of smoke from the funnels indicates that it's a diesel. Also placing the paddlewheel in the back is a solution to make the ship more narrow at the cost of efficiency. This is done to get under bridges. The lack of bridges would make a builder use paddlewheels on the sides if it were built for transport. Those two facts tells me this is a replica for tourists. I'm not 100% sure though, more like 95%.
Just to show that even though trains on roads aren't that common, it's not unique for Japan. Here is a video from USA and as you can see (hear) the Americans can't do anything without being LOUD :P
I know it happens in Europe too, but Japan is the only country I know of which has 4 trains in each direction every hour on such a track. Everywhere else it's like a train a day max.
A little note on the title. Japan has no real road trains. I think only Australia actually use them. They look sort of like this:
Woah, the system looks so complicated @_@ The street cars in San Francisco were scary because they were right in the road with the cars, but I have no idea how scary it would be to see a train next to me XD
Actually the paddle wheel in the back is authentic for a Mississippi River stern wheeler. Remember they were made to work with a draft of less than 6' (mark twain being the phrase called out by the person taking soundings at the front of the ship, letting the wheel house know that the draft is shallow) and moving the wheel to the stern was done to keep the paddle wheel from being damaged if the ship ran aground on the numerous sandbars that are found in the river.
I know it was the way to do it on the Mississippi River and it's interesting to read about the fear of sandbars, which is well justified in a number of rivers.
My point remains though. The reason for building this ship with a stern paddlewheel appears to be to make the "Wild West Riverboat" look for tourists rather than technical reasons. There is money in tourism and this have resulted in a lot of new (fake) historical vehicles. Just look at Disneyland. All the steamtrains are new. Switzerland built 5 brand new steam locomotives for tourists in 2000 (and surprisingly those oil powered steam engines use LESS oil than diesel since they use modern insulation and stuff). Japan have a diesel powered steam locomotive replica somewhere (I forgot where). It looks like a steam locomotive and sounds like a diesel >_<
Just remember Shiga Prefecture is in a sister relationship with the State of Michigan and most of the crew of this ship are also Michigander's. Hence the name Michigan.
Plus the majority of paddle wheel boats in the US are stern wheelers, that side paddle thing was mainly an European love affair. The main reason for the stern wheeler besides the obvious hazards on the Mississippi and other river is with the placement of the engine and paddles amidships they took up too much cargo room, and the whole reason for these boats to begin with is moving cargo up and down the rivers.
I will admit for being a quad decker she does have a surprisingly small paddle wheel. Probably due to the fact that she was designed to tool around on a lake and not have to fight against a current while returning upstream.
On another note even of the few original stern wheelers left they were all probably converted to diesel back in the early 1900's.
Last thing first. I seriously question converting to diesel in the early 20th century. When it comes to big engines (like ships and locomotives) then the battle didn't really start until mid 30'ties and diesel didn't win until mid 50'ties. In fact the state railroad in the UK got a shipment of brand new steam locomotives as late as 1960. I think you could be up to 50 years off with the estimate of when the conversions took place. Naturally I don't know for sure as I never actually considered diesel paddlewheeled riverboats until you mentioned them but it would just seem weird to convert steam to diesel when new vessels were steam powered.
As for paddlewheels... well I could say a lot, but I think it would go off topic. I think I will investigate Michigan a bit more and then there could be a new post in progress. I know of other (real) steam ships from Japan (Yamato is likely the best known, though she used turbine powered propellers).
I have been thinking a bit about this. I'm not going to write a post about steam ships. The topic wouldn't fit here. After all it's a place for otaku, not engineers (though it's possible for people to be both)
thats a lot of info.
So that's the difference between a railroad and a tram. I ride a railroad every day, then.
I'm not 100% sure about that. Sometimes I suspect the real difference between trams and lightrails (trains) are more like words on paper than real world differences. I wouldn't be surprised if some tramline has crossing signals somewhere where they always would get stuck in traffic otherwise. Since I don't know such a place I can't tell for sure though.