Tuesday 21 February 2023

EMU ex-1600 Series Celebrating the 1600th Post

Set D02 of the EMU Yoro Railway 600 (ex-Kintetsu 1600)series (October, 2016)

Thank you for visiting Tokyo Railway Labyrinth. This is the 1600th post since 2011. I hope that readers all over the world will continue enjoying Japanese railways and their related topics in this blog. In commemoration of the "1600th" post, I'm going to show you a train on the Yoro Railway with the number "1600" in its name.

Before that, I'd like to introduce Yoro Railway a little bit. It's a local railway company about 400 kilometers west of Tokyo. Connecting Kuwana and Ibi, its route length is 57.5 kilometers. The track is single and electrified. The route was spun off from Kintetsu in 2007. Different from the most Kintetsu lines, the gauge size of Yoro Railway is 1,067 millimeters.

Now, let's get down to the main topic. The EMU 600 series is a major fleet of Yoro Railway. You may say to me, "Wait! This is the 1600th post, so, the vehicle number should be "1600" not "600", shouldn't it?" In a sense, you're right. In reality, the former name of the EMU "600" series was the EMU Kintetsu "1600" series. It was renamed in 1992, when these cars were moved from the other Kintetsu lines. These cars are called "Senroku" among rail-fans. Senroku was a nickname of the Kintetsu 1600 series. It means "thousand (sen) and six hundreds (roku)" in Japanese. I like the ring of this word.

I hope that you will understand the history of the EMU ex-1600 series celebrating the 1600th post. Does that sound good?

Set D01 of the EMU Yoro Railway 600  (ex-Kintetsu 1600) series (October, 2016)