This is a continuation from my post on June 6th. After observing JR Freight’s mini locomotive at Nobeoka station, I headed to Takachiho Town in the northwestern part of Miyazaki Prefecture. Takachiho is famous for its stunning natural scenery.
On the way to Takachiho, I found trains along the road. What are those? The answer was a train inn. There was a railway named Takachiho line until 2005 in this area. It had been operated by a local company Takachiho Railway but unfortunately abolished in 2008 due to the severe damage by Typhoon number 14. One of local towns, Hinokage Town, took over two diesel railcars and opened a train inn named “TR Train Inn” along the ex-track. For your information, “TR” stands for Takachiho Railway. These railcars are Unit TR-104 and 105 of the TR-100 series built by Niigata Engineering in 1989. The TR-100 series is a 15.8-meter-long railcar equipped with a 183kW diesel engine and a fluid transmission system. For more information about this unique train inn, please check out the bottom of this post.
After observing the lovely train inn, I visited Takachiho Gorge, a deep canyon formed by Gokase River. I could see picturesque columnar joints on the walls of the valley. These joints remind visitors of rapidly cooled basalt or andesite lavas, but actually, the host rock is welded tuff erupted from Mt. Aso about 130,000 years ago. That’s very rare. I enjoyed both the train inn and the spectacular gorge in Miyazaki Prefecture.
