Friday 1 September 2017

Yoro D04: Revival Colored Train

Set D04, "Senroku" of the EMU Yoro 600 series stands at Nishi-Oogaki Station 

As I posted before, Yoro Railway is a local private company in Mie and Gifu prefectures, about 390 km west of Tokyo. Yoro Railway was spun off from Kintetsu in 2007, but still belongs to the Kintetsu Group. Connecting Kuwana on the Kintetsu Line and Ibi Terminal, its route length is 57.5 km. The track is single and electrified. Its electric system is 1,500 V DC overhead. Different from the Kintetsu lines, its gauge size is 1,067 mm.

Most of the trains on the Yoro Railway have maroon colored bodies, but there are several exceptions. For instance, set D04 of the EMU 600 series has beige colored bodies with a blue colored stripe. This unique color design is a revival taken from that of Kintetsu's commuter trains in the late 1950's. Set D04 is also an ex-Kintetsu train. Its former name was the EMU 1600 series, called "Senroku" among rail-fans. I like the ring of this word. Senroku was a nickname of the Kintetsu 1600 series. It means thousand (sen) and six (roku) in Japanese.

In the meantime, let me explain about the specification of set D04 using the rest of the blog space. Set D04 was built by Kinki Sharyo. It is composed of two 20 meter-long cars (car number Mo 604 and Ku 504). Mo 604 is a motor car; while Ku 504 is a trailer. Their bogies and security equipment were recently changed from the original ones.

The D04 is my favorite on the Yoro Railway.

Set D01, standard color (left) and Set D04, revival color (right) of the EMU 600 series