An Alternative To Diesel: The Baureihe 563

Friendly faces on Dôtonbori

Dôtonbori is the street to go restaurant crawling in Ôsaka (if you have the stomach). As there's a lot of venues, there's a lot of competition, so a lot of wacky stuff to draw the passer-by's attention.

If anyone knows why this restaurant is called Shôwa Hormone, please let me know. Shôwa, I can guess, is nostalgia for the post-war Shôwa era; but Hormone needs a good story behind it!

Is this guy mad at people double-dipping their fried skewers?

By the way, that's two fronts featuring another monument of Ôsaka, Tsutenkaku tower, just in case you forgot where you were.

Finally, we have this guy, a true local hero: Kuidaore Tarô. This animatronic was introduced in 1950 as a mascot for the Cuidaore restaurant, which has since closed, but Tarô and his drumming were such a stable of Dôtonbori, that people clamoured to have him back.

I dunno. I think he looks like Brains from Thunderbirds under the influence of the Mysterons. A figure of his time though.

"Kuidaore" by the way, is from the proverb:

京都の着倒れ、大阪の食い倒れ Kyôto no ki-daore, Ôsaka no kui-daore Spend all your money on clothes in Kyôto, and on food in Ôsaka

Today, "kuidaore" is colloquially translated as "eat until you drop" - so go restaurant crawling if you can!

Strasbourg's Christkindelsmärik

One of Europe's oldest Christmas market, and likely the most famous in France, is Strasbourg's. Its existence is attested as far back as 1570, appearing in the years following Protestant Reformation. Today it is a sprawling event, covering all the main squares of the central island of Strasbourg, and it's very busy, especially in the evenings and on weekends.

The traditional Alsatian name of the market is Christkindelsmärik, "the market of baby Jesus", while the city's more recent branding (since the 1990s) proclaims the town as "Capital of Christmas".

Pictures from 2018 - I haven't been to this year's market yet, but I plan to once my workload deflates - I get my annual stock of jams from the local producer's market!

The Tower of the Sun

With another World Expo underway at Osaka this year, a massive park to the North of the city (actually in the neighbouring city of Suita) sits on the site of the first Japanese World Expo in 1970. There's usually some form of centrepiece: in 1889 it was the Eiffel Tower, and at Osaka Expo '70, it was the Tower of the Sun.

It is a massive sculpture by Taro Okamoto, which it was possible to climb into to view another work called the Tree of Life. As it was going to have people inside, it needed a lightning rod - that's what the top face (officially a mask, but I tend to call it the "bird face" - whose eyes light up at night apparently) is sporting. The three faces on the back, front and top represent humanity's past, present and future respectively, though some art critics and historians have a more bleak interpretation due to Okamoto's larger body of work and stance against technological progress, something the Expo would put emphasis on.

Similarly to the Eiffel Tower, the Tower of the Sun was supposed to be a relatively ephemeral structure, and nearly all the Expo pavilions around it have been demolished. Like the Eiffel Tower, it was avant-garde and no doubt not everyone liked it. But this building is one of the few to be preserved, and requires regular attention - again, like the Eiffel Tower which needs periodic repainting. In any case, the Tower of the Sun is one of Osaka's most iconic landmarks.

Karlsruhe Palace

Thought I'd pop up to Karlsruhe today; it's not very far and I'd never been. It was... well, OK for a light outing. There's a lot of construction work going on in town, and it wasn't very animated being late January. Still, the weather was good enough for a pleasant walk around the centrepiece, the Palace, which houses the history museum of the State of Baden.

Karlsruhe is a relatively young town, by European history standards, as it was founded in 1715 as a new seat of power for the Margrave of Baden. A symmetric living building with a rear wing mounted by a tower was surrounded by vast gardens, and streets radiated out from the palace - a rather original urban arrangement, I don't remember seeing it in other places. Following French invasion in the late 18th century, Emperor Napoleon granted Baden the status of Grand Duchy: the ruler gained access to more riches and symbols such as a crown, a throne...

The Grand Duchy was briefly overthrown in a revolution in 1849, and abolished entirely following the fall of the German Empire in 1918. The region of Baden, stretching from Mannheim and Karlsruhe in the North, along the East side of the Rhine down to Freiburg and Konstanz, became a Republic within the Weimar Republic, and merged with neighbouring Württemberg, the area around Stuttgart, into the Land of Baden-Württemberg we have today in 1952. Baden was the smaller of the two former Grand Duchies, and was more reticent to the merger, as this poster in the museum shows.

"This is what the merger will be like!"

Ultimately, the merger wasn't as bad a deal as feared: when a Baden-only referendum was held in 1970, a return to a split was emphatically rejected. Still, it is not rare to see the yellow and red flag of Baden in the South-West corner of Germany - I've seen it outside a drinks hut near Oberkirch (bottom left picture) and on several castle ruins. It naturally flies atop the Karlsruhe Palace tower.

A potential unfulfilled: the Intercity 225

As I had some time to wander around before catching the Eurostar back to France, I checked out the trains at King's Cross station. To my slight disappointment, there wasn't a huge amount of variety on display: Azuma, Azuma, Azuma... They're nice trains, don't get me wrong (built by Hitachi, using the same base as JR Kyushu's 885 series), but that's all there was. Still, I decided to check out all the platforms, and, at the far end, hidden behind an Azuma, there it was.

The star in train books during my childhood was the Intercity 125 or High Speed Train (HST), a 125 mph-capable Diesel-powered set, which, I think, still holds the world record for the fastest Diesel passenger service. I would have loved to see one when visiting England, but this was just as good. In fact, I had seen it out of the window while riding into London, taken a crappy photo and thought "oh well, never mind", only to see it had followed us in.

In the early 90s, the Intercity 225 was touted as the next big thing: all-electric, capable of running at 225... km/h (that's 140 mph, using different units was admittedly a bit disingenuous), designed to receive a tilting mechanism later on, completing the Advanced Passenger Train's redemption arc. What could go wrong?

Not long after the introduction of the Intercity 225, Britain's railways were privatised, with the typical lack of ambition for service that it brings. No private company was going to invest in the infrastructure and upgrades to allow the train to reach its full potential; meanwhile France and Germany were expanding their 250-300 km/h networks. Instead, these trains were limited it to 125 mph - the same as the HST, just on electrified lines. Worse still, it was one of these sets that met with the consequences of the privatised rail maintenance's culture of corner-cutting and outsourcing, on a broken rail at Hatfield in 2000.

From the outside looking in, I'm left with a bitter sense of "what could have been" for this train. Perhaps a rail fan from the UK could say more about what they feel the Intercity 225's legacy would be. At least its successor, the Azuma, has the fact that it's bi-mode (Diesel and electric) to shout about.

Still great to see one and its "so 90s" design in the flesh! LNER have also given the trains their original livery back, except with a burgundy main body colour instead of the original graphite grey, while the locomotive was in a special commemorative livery for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

For more on the Intercity 225: Ruairidh MacVeigh's video

Some life in the rock pools of Hashigui-iwa! The crabs in the first picture were very small, but the one hiding in the second picture was more sizeable. I forget how big, but it was big enough to observe scuttling for shelter as I approached. Closest match on iNaturalist appears to be the Striped Shore Crab, which grows up to 5 cm.

The local birds of prey, likely kites, were also out, surveying the area.

To build or not to rebuild? The case of Heijô-kyô

In 710, the Imperial court moved from Kashihara to Nara. Just over 80 years later, the capital once again changed location, settling in Kyôto where it would stay for a millennium. The palace in Nara was abandoned, and in the 1000 years that followed, the grounds were used for menial things. However, a few structures have been rebuilt in recent years, such as the main audience hall in the background, which was completed in time for Heijô-kyô's 1300th anniversary.

Besides a museum housing artefacts from its 8th-century heyday, the palace is seen here hosting some art exhibits, and a play is underway, just visible in the above photo. Of course, I didn't understand a word of it...

This view of the Suzaku South gate shows how recently interest was given to the site: by the time excavations had begun, a railway was already running through it! This is the Kintetsu line, opened in 1914. As such, trains between Ôsaka and Nara pass directly through this historic site.

We've seen these trains before, quite recently in fact, but they're back, on a much brighter day to really make their colours pop, and in a different border station between France and Germany.

This is Lauterbourg, the easternmost town in France, in the North-East corner of Alsace, and it shows the contrast between the line on the left-hand side of the Rhine, and the one on the right-hand side. The line from Strasbourg to Wörth am Rhein is not electrified to this day, and only sees local regional traffic. Nonetheless, Lauterbourg appeared to have a massive yard back in the day, now just a flat expanse of disused rails.

At the North end of Lauterbourg station, we find some old German mechanical signals, still in use!

Finally, like in the previous post on these trains, I have an amusing place name to share. It's more funny to pronounce with an English accent than anything else, but it also looks like a game of Countdown gone horribly wrong!

The CFTR's steam train

In a serious rain shower, the Chemin de Fer Touristique du Rhin's train stops at Volgelsheim station, where the association that maintains the line has its museum. The train itself is made up of former Austrian carriages built in the 1920s with what I suspect were 2nd and 3rd class seating.

The locomotive is a T3 tender built around 1900 at Graffenstaden, just South of Strasbourg, for the Alsace-Lorraine Railways. At the time, the region was under Imperial German control, hence the Eagle logo and German inscription "Elsaß-Lothringen" above the number. The association has two of these, nicknamed Berthold and Theodor. These are supported by small Diesel engines; on our trip, one of these hauled the train to the depot, where the extent of the association's work is on display. The active engines are maintained here, while others are being restored.

Peut-être un jour? - To run again one day?

The town of Breisach, on the other side of the Rhine and therefore in Germany, is visible, and a boat carries passengers across the river from near the depot.

Hormone is apparently short for ホルモン焼き, horumon-yaki, a dish that originated in Ôsaka. It is made from miscellaneous organs, but the organs aren't where the hormones come from... It is marketed as a meal that can improve stamina, but ホルモン is also close to 放る物, read hôrumon in the local dialect ôsaka-ben, which means "discarded things", which is what horumon-yaki is made of. Maybe the latter came first, and was construed in to ホルモン as a kind of joke.

With thanks to @felvass for the hint.

Friendly faces on Dôtonbori

Dôtonbori is the street to go restaurant crawling in Ôsaka (if you have the stomach). As there's a lot of venues, there's a lot of competition, so a lot of wacky stuff to draw the passer-by's attention.

If anyone knows why this restaurant is called Shôwa Hormone, please let me know. Shôwa, I can guess, is nostalgia for the post-war Shôwa era; but Hormone needs a good story behind it!

Is this guy mad at people double-dipping their fried skewers?

By the way, that's two fronts featuring another monument of Ôsaka, Tsutenkaku tower, just in case you forgot where you were.

Finally, we have this guy, a true local hero: Kuidaore Tarô. This animatronic was introduced in 1950 as a mascot for the Cuidaore restaurant, which has since closed, but Tarô and his drumming were such a stable of Dôtonbori, that people clamoured to have him back.

I dunno. I think he looks like Brains from Thunderbirds under the influence of the Mysterons. A figure of his time though.

"Kuidaore" by the way, is from the proverb:

京都の着倒れ、大阪の食い倒れ Kyôto no ki-daore, Ôsaka no kui-daore Spend all your money on clothes in Kyôto, and on food in Ôsaka

Today, "kuidaore" is colloquially translated as "eat until you drop" - so go restaurant crawling if you can!