EMU Keio 1000 series, 1734F (orange-beige) near Takaido Station
I was born in a western suburb of Tokyo, along the Keio-Inokashira Line. Keio is one of the private railway companies in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The route consists of the Keio Line and the Inokashira Line, extending to the western part of Tokyo and northern Kanagawa Prefecture.
The EMU (Electrical Multiple Unit) 1000 series operates on the Inokashira Line, connecting Shibuya and Kichijoji stations. The commercial operation of this EMU started in 1996, as the first long (20m) body train, which is composed of 5 cars with a VVVF (Variable Voltage and Variable Frequency) control system, on the line.
One of the features of this stainless-steel body EMU is that each train set shows a different color on the front mask and the side lines. Those are orange-beige (photo at the top), ivory white (photo at the bottom), salmon-pink, light-green, lilac, light-blue and blue-green ... the seven rainbow colors. This coloring has been a tradition of trains on the Inokashira Line since 1962, when the EMU 3000 series stainless-steel cars were launched as the first-generation rainbow colored trains.
Nowadays, people in Tokyo associate rainbow colored trains with the Inokashira Line. I like these trains, because they're colorful and graceful, but not lurid. For me, I'm proud of the rainbow colored trains of my hometown.
EMU Keio 1000 series, 1702F (ivory white) near Nishi-eifuku Station