EMU JR East 205 series travels on the Tsurumi lineDo you remember that the used cars were introduced onto the JR East Nambu branch line in the Tokyo Metropolitan area last October? That was the EMU E127 series transferred from the Niigata area. It was curious that the used cars in the countryside were moved to the urban area, but I posted "It makes sense, because it would cost a lot if a new model was introduced" at that time.
Sorry, my point of view was wrong. On November 24th, 2023, a new model, EMU E131-1000 series, was introduced onto the JR East Tsurumi line. The Nambu branch line and the Tsurumi line are similar, because they are both "urban local lines" in the industrial area. Why was the new model only introduced onto the Tsurumi line? The leading hypothesis among rail-fans this time was the difference of the train operation systems. The trains on the Nambu branch line are operated without conductors; meanwhile, conductors should be on board the trains of the Tsurumi line. It looked reasonable this time for sure, but this hypothesis was again incorrect because JR East recently released that the train operation without conductors will also start on the Tsurumi line on March 16th of this year. Umm... difficult.
For your information, I'm showing photos of the present model on the Tsurumi line, namely the EMU 205 series and the same model in Indonesia. I'm going to introduce the new model on the Tsurumi line, named the EMU E131-1000 series, in the next post. To be continued...
