How To Miss Doctor Yellow « modelrail.otenko

5Aug/240

How To Miss Doctor Yellow

So, you've all heard the news: Doctor Yellow is being retired in 2027. Thankfully that's 2 years away, so I still have time to see the consist in action. During my recent trip to Japan I travelled all the way to coastal Kanagawa to photograph Shinkansen and freight in the country-side, but gave up due to the weather and ... a general feeling of old-age?

The Original Plan

Take enough trains to Hayakawa Station and walk an extended path to Nebukawa Station. The embedded map below doesn't show the actual path, opting for the most direct. If one follows some of the mountain contours, many tunnel portals can be observed from amazing angles!

It was probably overly-adventurous in the middle of a humid summer. The forecast was actually for rain, but by 9am it was already nearly 30 degrees celsius.

What Actually Happened

I arrived at Hayakawa Station bright and early on Thursday the 6th of June, 2024. There's a pedestrian bridge just east of the station (and a Lawson), so I went to get some line-side shots (and breakfast).

The elevation of the pedestrian bridge really is nice! For some reason I decided that the main goal was to get up to the first Shinkansen tunnel portal.

I got half-way up a hill to a beautiful vantage point for Shinkansen. As I was making my way up there two freighters passed on the zai-rai-sen, one being a Kangaroo-Liner!

Finally, the s-bend of the road provided an awesome vantage point.

I was appeased by the Shinkansen action:

After watching quite a few Shinkansen pass, I somehow let the ambient temperature, humidity and mosquitos get to me. It was a mild climb to this point and I knew this was one of the smaller inclines over the entire path. Due to all of this, I chose to not continue on the original path and, instead, to head back into Tokyo and check out anything with air-conditioning. I'm still regretting this!

Anyway, I spent 5 seconds admiring the people who obviously didn't choose for the Shinkansen to be built next to their bedroom...

...and then I left back to Hayakawa, took the locals to Fujiawa, Enoden to Enoshima, the monorail to Ofuna and then trains to Akiba.

What Did I Miss Out On?

For those playing at home, there's a Japanese-only website known as Kamotsu (Freight) Channel for tracking the locomotives on japanese train services. Users also have the opportunity to upload other sightings... including Doctor Yellow! So, a week after returning from Japan, I was still in the sliding-window of sightings and happened to check when Doctor Yellow been operational whilst I was in Japan.

(You'll just have to pretend that the screenshot above was for the correct dates)

Would you believe it was the exact day I'd chosen to be line-side in Kanagawa? If I'd stayed 30 more minutes I would've snapped the ultra-rare sighting of Doctor Yellow on the Tokaido Shinkansen? The thought still haunts me... but I will seek revenge! I'll also go back to Nou in Itoigawa and also find those bloody onion trains.