Oigawa Railway, Shizuoka – May, 2025

18Sep/250

Oigawa Railway, Shizuoka – May, 2025

Apologies, this is going to be a long post. It's been a while since I've been back to this model-railway-in-real-life-paradise and I've missed it! Although the line suffered damage from a landside back in 2022 and has been truncated to Kawane-Onsen Sasamado Station, Oigawa Railway is still operating services in the area where they can and have plans to repair the line to full operation again in the future.

They are also still very active with their vehicle preservation and restoration, working on EMUs, electric locomotives and steam engines. You can find their vehicles over here, but it's better to just go and visit the railway! Recently, they've re-painted one of their electric locomotives in the Japanese Blue Train (Night Train) style and it looks superb. It's been given the nickname (as with everything in Japan) "Chibi-Blue" where "chibi" translates loosely to "Tiny" with hints of "cute" and "little".

The goal was to see this new livery in action and to check out all of the usual awesomeness that is Oigawa. To get there from Shin-Osaka, I took a not-too-early shinkansen, but thankfully my friend hinted to an exact service to check out... being the Wonderful Dreams Livery!

It's plastered in Disney characters and determined to cart you to Tokyo where you can end up at Tokyo Disney... It only took me to Hamamatsu. From here it was a transfer to a local train, otherwise I'd shoot straight over Kanaya Station where the Oigawa Junction is.

The transfers were made and we wandered up to the pedestrian overpass just east of the station for a spectacular view.

You know you're in Shizuoka when Mt Fuji loiters in every photo. And when you see the beautiful cream of their EMU sets.

And freight trains... even though it was Golden Week, we had freight! The Oigawa service (of which we intended to also ride on!) was due into Kanaya Station and we got in position.

CHIBI BLUE! Straight away! A good omen.

The platform for Oigawa at Kanaya Station is a terminus, so the front loco becomes the rear... with the Steamer now on point. Were people here for the C11 or Chibi Blue?

A bit of both... and before-long we were off to Shin-Kanaya. The usual suspects were waiting in the yard, entertaining the children.

We rode through to Ieyama where we had a short photo-stop whilst waiting for the opposing train.

Once on the platform, whilst most ran to the front of the train...

I was more interested in chibi-blue.

Such a good looking loco and a stellar paint job to match!

We continued on to the temporary terminus Kawane-onsen sasamado.

It's such a picturesque location! You can get some really good photos from the river-bed, and so we got into position.

With time on our side, we checked out the goods at the station, returning to the other side of the bridge for the next service.

Always happy to see us, Thomas is.

A stock-livery E500 was on the rear and would soon depart back across the bridge. The lighting to the north was too harsh, especially for the darker locomotive, so I returned to the south-side for the final pass.

As much as I love Thomas, I'm always here to see the other relics that the Oigawa Railway preserves and operates.

Waiting for us at Kawane-onsen Sasamado Station was the Kintetsu 16000. We actually only ended up riding it back to Ieyama, so that we could check out Chibi-Blue once more.

We arrived at Ieyama and alighted the train. The stationmaster received the staff and the EMU was off. We loitered to inspect Percy.

How perfectly hilarious. I love that they've actually painted the middle driving wheelset black to make Percy a proper 0-4-0.

The station precinct was inspected... and then the next SL service came through.

And the service stopped... but had no reason to as the path was clear to the terminus? Oh... watering!

It gave me a good chance to check out Chibi-Blue again!

The SL was reconnnected and they were outta there.

But not for long...

And then we joined and returned to Shin-Kanaya.

Next, we actually took a taxi to the bridge where I took a photo a decade-or-so-ago... to try and reproduce it. Unfortunately the trees weren't as leafy as they were, and may have actually been removed... I couldn't work out exactly where I'd stood in the past. Photos were still taken!

And then we wandered back to the yard around the back of the station, next to the river. This is where the factories were, back in the day, that also used the railway line.