"Nighttime Ikegami Line"

The Ikegami Line is interesting, for a few reasons. The first thing you notice when using the line is that the trains only have three cars, which is really unusual for Tokyo. Most lines have ten cars, with a few six and eight car trains on one end of that, and a few 15-car trains on the other.

The next thing you notice as you travel down the line, is that several of the stations are as though in a time slip, with wooden roofs and other station bits that look as though they're either from the many-decades-ago past, or on a seldom traveled line out in the countryside somewhere.

Then - as you watch the trains going in the other direction, you notice that there are several different types of train on the line. By riding a few of them and noting the plaques that say when they were manufactured, you notice that the oldest of the four types being used dates back to around 1963 or so, and the newest is from this year (2008).

Other than that, it's just a normal branch line, except the station names tend to be more interesting than those on many other lines.

Anyway, that's not much, but it's four in the morning and I need to get some sleep, so....

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
http://uk.youtube.com/lylehsaxon