It’s mid-autumn in Tokyo, and the daytime temperature now hovers around 20 degrees Celsius. The most comfortable season of the year has arrived! I recently visited the Tama River again along the Odakyu Line.
After getting off at Izumi-Tamagawa Station, I headed to the riverbank and focused on searching for fossils—my lifelong passion. Please take a look at the photo below. This was my find of the day: a fossilized Cultellus sp., a large, rectangular marine bivalve. Welcome back to the world above ground after more than a million years of sleep!
Of course, I can’t end without mentioning the railway side of things—this is a railway blog, after all! On my way home, I switched gears to another hobby: trainspotting at Izumi-Tamagawa Station. My theme that day was the “double-double track” (a quadruple track). In 1964, the company planned to expand the double track into a double-double track in the urban area to relieve congestion. Because of the densely built-up surroundings, the project took nearly half a century to complete, finally finishing in 2018.
Today, the inner two tracks are used for limited express and express trains, while the outer two are for semi-express and local trains. Please take a look at the top photo—seeing two trains running side by side like they’re racing is always exciting for rail fans.
That day, I enjoyed both the million-year history of the Earth and the modern engineering of the double-double track in the city. I truly served a “double purpose” that day on the Odakyu Line.
