After enjoying Isumi Railway, I visited another railway constituting the trans-peninsula railways of Boso Peninsula. It's Kominato Railway.
To start, let's quickly review Kominato Railway. It's a local private company established in 1925. Connecting Goi and Kazusa-Nakano, there are 18 stations over a total operating length of 39.1 kilometers. The route was opened in 1928. The track is single and non-electrified. This railway forms the western half of the trans-peninsula railways.
Let's get down to the main topic. I'm going to show you Kominato's new diesel railcar, the KiHa 40 series. You might already know this, but the KiHa 40 series was originally developed by Japanese National Railways (JNR) in the 1970s. Kominato recently purchased five secondhand cars of the KiHa 40 series from JR East to replace the decrepit KiHa 200 series. Needless to say, JR East is one of the succeeding companies of JNR. Currently, two cars of those, namely KiHa 40-1 and 40-2, are operated on the line, but the remaining three cars are still under maintenance.
Let's see the details about KiHa 40-1 and 40-2. They were built by Niigata Tekko in 1979. Their original names were KiHa 40-2001 and 40-2006 respectively. After being operated in the northern part of Japan, these two cars were transferred to Kominato Railway in 2020, and started commercial operations in 2021. KiHa 40-1 has JR East's Tadami line-colored body (green-colored body); meanwhile, KiHa 40-2 has Kominato's original-colored body (orange-colored body). They were very beautiful under the spring afternoon sunlight.
