One year has passed since I introduced the Sheep Train on the Kodomonokuni line in this blog. Today, I'm going to show you another poster train being operated on the line.
On October 11th, 2018, Yokohama Minato Mirai Railway Company launched a special poster train named "Cow Train" on their Kodomonokuni line. The purpose of this poster train is to promote tourism to Kodomonokuni (the Children's Land), which is an amusement park located in Yokohama City, some 30 kilometers southwest of Tokyo. The company currently offers one set of their 2-car train, Y011F of the EMU Y000 series, for the second generation poster train. We can see images of cows both on the bodies and the interior of the trains. Each car depicts a cow in the outer design; meanwhile the pastures with cows are drawn in the interior. Needless to say, there are many cows in Kodomonokuni.
For your information, construction of Kodomonokuni started in 1959 in celebration of the marriage of the Crown Prince Akihito (present reigning emperor), and was completed in 1965 by a social welfare corporation, Kodomonokuni Association. Although Kodomonokuni was a popular spot among urban families, there was a big issue... public transportation to get there. Kodomonokuni Association, then, constructed an access railway, the Kodomonokuni line in 1967. It's a short (3.4 kilometers) single track railway connecting Kodomonokuni and Nagatsuta on the Tokyu Den-en-toshi and the JR East Yokohama lines. I was a frequent user of the Kodomonokuni line, when I was a kid.
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| Interior of the Cow Train Official information about the Cow Train (in Japanese): |