Heritage route
SL Gunma
Takasaki → Minakami · Japan
SL Gunma in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 59 km
- Fastest time
- ≈ 2 h
- Average speed
- 30 km/h
- Top speed
- 65 km/h
- Operator
- JR East
- Train
- D51 498 · C61 20 steam
- Countries
- Japan
- In service since
- 1988
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Restored D51 498 “Degoichi” and C61 20 haul retro coaches up the Joetsu Line on weekends: steam echoing off the Tone gorge under Tanigawa’s wall.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1924544 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 5 m from it
- Checked against the running timetable via Transitous: our line sits 1 km from the shape of 741M
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Read more on Wikipedia (in JA) ↗
More heritage routes
- Durango & Silverton
1882 gold-rush narrow gauge: steam-hauled ever since, on the Highline ledge blasted 120 m above the Animas River gorge.
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Theroux’s Old Patagonian Express: 750 mm gauge, 1922 steam locomotives and wood-stove-heated wooden coaches across the steppe.
Wikipedia ↗ - Sagano Scenic Railway
A retired JR alignment above the Hozugawa rapids: twenty-five slow minutes of maples and gorge that the modern main line skips through tunnels.
Wikipedia ↗ - Lézard Rouge
The Bey of Tunis’s 1910 saloon cars, freshly restored: creeping into the Selja gorge’s ochre cliffs, photo stops included, in phosphate country.
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More train routes in Japan.