Tuesday, 30 October 2012
If it seems Monday's effort was in direct contradiction to Hughesy's if you've got the rail pass you might as well use it principle, the next three days were going to deliver rail travel in abundance.
The schedule for the first of the three days, on the other hand, underlines the variety side of things, starting with a morning ride on an ancient rail motor on what Madam had christened the Endangered Railroad up to Takanosu, where we'd be stopping for lunch at a French restaurant, followed by a leg on a JR local line down to the coast and a main line service looping around the northwestern coast of Honshu to Aomori.
If you’re looking for details regarding the Endangered Railroad, the official moniker is the Akita Nairiku Jūkan Railway. It’s what’s termed a third sector company (the Japan Rail consortium being the first sector and the major private lines the second) that took over two former JR lines in 1986, and added a new line to link the two in 1989. Since the line runs across a sparsely populated region, it’s never going to be a big money spinner, and since it faces what you might term severe business challenges you don’t need to be Einstein to figure out where the Endangered bit springs from.
Seats on the Endangered Rail are on a first come, first served basis, and we weren't sure whether the carriage would have room to stow the Black Monster, so we were into breakfast at the hotel just after seven, packed and booked out around eight and second inline for tickets in the booking office. So far so good.
We were second onto the train as well, which gave us plenty of time to scope out possible luggage space. As it turned out there were a couple of bench style seats towards what we presumed must be the front of the rail motor, where there was a handy space for the Monster and the prospect of a view to the front on what promised to be an ultra-scenic route.
The cabin wasn't quite full when we started off, though there wasn't an abundance of spare seats either, and there was no way of knowing how many of the passengers were there for the long haul to Takanosu and how many were destined for a stop somewhere along the way.
As soon as we started someone plonked themselves right in front of where I was sitting, blocking the view through the front of the rail motor, which was, of course, why I'd plonked myself there in the first place. We were actually looking for a space for Mr Monster, found one at the end of a bench seat right beside the driver's cabin and realized this was likely to deliver a panoramic view of the upcoming countryside.