One year ago, I showed you JR East's rail carrying train, "LT set" of the DMU (Diesel Multiple Unit) KiYa E195 series, on this blog. It was a monster train for carrying 150 meter-long welded rails. Today, I'm going to show you another type of rail carrying train.
"ST set" of the DMU KiYa E195 series (hereafter "ST set") is a train for carrying 25 meter-long standard rails. It was commissioned in 2017 to transport rails for various places on the JR East lines. 25 sets in total were built by Nippon Sharyo. The ST set is composed of 2 engine cars, and each car has a 265kW diesel engine. You may feel that the ST set is similar to JR Central's rail carrying train, namely the DMU KiYa97 series. Well observed! Actually, they're sister trains. Technical specifications of the two kinds of trains are mostly same. The only difference is that JR East's ST set has special cold-proof and snow-proof equipment on the trains.
Where should we go to see the ST set? JR East doesn't release the timetable of the track maintenance vehicles including the rail carrying trains, so what I can do is leave it to fate. Happiness always comes suddenly. I came across the ST set, when I was taking commuter train photos at Yoshikawa-minami station on the JR East Musashino line. It was my first time coming across the ST set outside of the railyards. Needless to say, I clicked away with my camera.
