4K cab view - One of Japan's great local lines ! Kisuki Line Shinji to Bingo Ochiai

 

The Kisuki Line (木次線, Kisuki-sen) is a railway line in Japan operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West). The 81.9 km (50.9 mi) line connects Shinji in Matsue, Shimane with Bingo Ochiai in Shōbara, Hiroshima.

Why Are These Railways so Perfect?

 

JR West special rapid service Himeji → Tsuruga (JR Kobe line, JR Kyoto line, Kosai line)

 

Wakayama to Osaka, Japan Train Cab Video HD

4K cab view - Geibi Line Hiroshima Station to Fukuen Line Fuchū Station, Japan

The Geibi Line (芸備線 Geibi-sen) is a railway line operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West) in the mountainous area of the Chūgoku region in Japan

What It’s Like To Ride Japan’s Hello Kitty Bullet Train

The Hello Kitty bullet train can be found speeding across western Japan. It launched on June 30th and runs until November. The purpose of the Shinkansen is to encourage travel throughout western Japan. Here's a look at what it's like to ride the train.

Hello Kitty Shinkansen train to debut in Japan this summer

The world-famous Sanrio character wants to welcome you onboard her very own high-speed train.

It was a sad day when the West Japan Railway company reminded us recently that their limited-edition 500 Series Evangelion Shinkansen would be ceasing operation this May. The specially wrapped train, which took its styling cues from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, had been shuttling passengers to stations along the Sanyo Shinkansen line from Osaka to Fukuoka since November 2015, becoming a fixture in the landscape of the region.

It’s time to wipe away those tears now, though, as JR West has just announced there’ll be a new animated character tie-up in store for their 500 Series Shinkansen. This time, they’re adding a whole lot of kawaii cuteness to the high-speed model, with Sanrio’s Hello Kitty leading the charge for their next cool train project.

The 51 Busiest Train Stations in the World-All but 6 are Located in Japan

The graph surfaced online displaying some interesting statistics. It’s a bar chart of the busiest train stations in the world, measured by the number of people who pass through them each year.

Perhaps coming as no surprise to those who have experienced its mind-numbingly complex transport complexes, Japan tops the list. What is surprising is the degree to which Japan dominates this list, with all but six stations residing here, and about half of them in the Tokyo area alone.

Shinjuku Station in Tokyo is the world's busiest train station with approximately 1,260,000,000 passing through each each year.

Many people are often in awe of Shinjuku Station’s massive size or complain about its complexity, built to handle over one million daily commuters. I don’t know what their problem is. Here’s a perfectly simple map of the place:

Actually this is just the JR-East railway section of the station which accommodates four other train operators. So multiply that map by about three and you’ll have the rough make-up of the basic station. Throw in all the other shopping and entertainment facilities often found around train stations and you have a labyrinth that’d make David Bowie give a whistling admiration.

  

Here’s the full list of 51 stations. If you don’t live in Japan there’s a slight chance your country is on there.

1  Shinjuku (Tokyo, Japan)

2  Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan)

3  Ikebukuro (Tokyo, Japan)

4  Umeda (Osaka, Japan)

5  Yokohama (Kanagawa, Japan)

6  Kita-Senju (Tokyo, Japan)

7  Nagoya (Aichi, Japan)

8  Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan)

9  Shinagawa (Tokyo, Japan)

10 Takadanobaba (Tokyo, Japan)

11 Namba (Osaka, Japan)

12 Shinbashi (Tokyo, Japan)

13 Tennouji (Osaka, Japan)

14 Akihabara (Tokyo, Japan)

15 Kyoto (Kyoto, Japan)

16 Sannomiya (Kobe, Japan)

17 Omiya (Saitama, Japan)

18 Yurakucho-Hibiya (Tokyo, Japan)

19 Nishi-Funabashi (Chiba, Japan)

20 Meguro (Tokyo, Japan)

21 Daimon-Hamamatsucho (Tokyo, Japan)

22 Ueno (Tokyo, Japan)

23 Oshiage (Tokyo, Japan)

24 Paris Nord (Paris, France)

25 Taipei Railway Station (Taipei,Taiwan)

26 Machida (Tokyo, Japan)

27 Gare de Chatelet (Paris, France)

28 Kawasaki (Kanagawa, Japan)

29 Roma Termini Railway Station (Rome, Italy)

30 Tamachi-Mita (Tokyo, Japan)

31 Kyobashi (Osaka, Japan)

32 Funabashi (Chiba, Japan)

33 Ayase (Tokyo, Japan)

34 Hamburg Central Station (Hamburg, Germany)

35 Yoyogi-Uehara (Tokyo, Japan)

36 Kamata (Kamata, Japan)

37 Gotanda (Tokyo, Japan)

38 Kichijoji (Tokyo, Japan)

39 Kanayama (Aichi, Japan)

40 Musashikosugi (Kanagawa, Japan)

41 Fujisawa (Kanagawa, Japan)

42 Oimachi (Tokyo, Japan)

43 Nakano (Tokyo, Japan)

44 Tachikawa (Tokyo, Japan)

45 Iidabashi (Tokyo, Japan)

46 Kashiwa (Chiba, Japan)

47 Hakata (Fukuoka, Japan)

48 Tsuruhashi (Osaka, Japan)

49 Nishi-Nippori (Tokyo, Japan)

50 Nakameguro (Tokyo, Japan)

51 Zurich Main Station (Zurich, Switzerland)

TrainSpotting In China

China's 'train hunter' on a quest to chronicle its fast-expanding railways

Wang Wei has spent 10 years travelling all over China to photograph trains and new lines, but can he keep up with the incredible pace of the country’s rail boom?

Armed with his trusty Nikon camera, Wang Wei has hiked up to the frosty Tibetan plateau and across the Gobi desert; he has journeyed to a tropical island in the South China Sea and to China’s remote border with Pakistan – all to satisfy his inexplicable urge to photograph trains.

“I never get tired. You don’t get tired if you are doing something you feel truly passionate about,” says Wang, who at 24 has already built a personal archive of hundreds of thousands of photographs of trains.

China’s No 1 trainspotter, who grew up just next to Beijing’s Xizhimen station and still lives with his parents, believes he was born with a fascination for ferroequinology.

Since that pre-Olympic push began, China has built the world’s longest and fastest high-speed rail routes, using sleek white bullet trains to slash the distances between mega-cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

In just over seven years, about 11,800 miles (19,000km) of high-speed track – about 55% of the global total – has been laid. “What the world did in half-a-century, we have done in 10 years,” said Zhao Jian, a transport expert from Jiaotong University in Beijing.

While China has expanded its railway system there is one difference in how they have addressed safety and reliability as compared to Japan.  The last passenger train derailment in Japan was more than 10 years ago. When a motorman working for JR West and behind schedule took a train at speed into curve in western Osaka resulting in several hundred deaths.  The Shinkansen which has been in operation for 51 years has never been involved in any fatal accident.