I sometimes come across petrol transportation trains in the metropolitan area. Being pulled by electric locomotives, they pass by me in the blink of an eye, and disappear into a group of urban buildings. Today, I am going to post about these petrol transportation trains.
There are several oil refineries in and around the metropolitan area. They are for example in Kawasaki, Yokohama and Chiba cities. Do you know how to carry the refined petrol to consumption regions? Coastal tankers, tank trucks and petrol transportation trains are the main transporters.
Petrol transportation trains are operated mainly toward the inland areas such as Gunma, Yamanashi and Nagano prefectures. Type TaKi1000 is known as the petrol transportation freight car. It was commissioned in 1993 to replace the old freight car, Type TaKi43000. A total of 1,008 cars were built by Nippon Sharyo and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. They all belong to JR Freight’s railyards. The green-colored cars are owned by Japan Oil Transportation Company (see the top photo). On the other hand, the owner of the dark blue ones is Japan Oil Terminal & Logistics Company (see the photo below). The most notable point of TaKi1000 is its high speed… 95 kilometers per hour. It may look not so fast, but please remember that inland railways in Japan are located in mountainous areas. Furthermore, the track gauge is 1,067 millimeters… a narrow gauge.
You may want to know the towing locomotives as well, so, please review my previous posts, which I explained the Class EH200, EF210 and EF210-300.
