Local Ampelmännchen!

Schaffhausen's Schwabentor

Schaffhausen has a great preserved historical centre. One of the entries to this would have been the Schwabentor, the Gate of Swabia, and indeed, it faces North, towards the southwestern area of Germany. Built in 1361, it burned down in 1932, and a couple of curious features were added to it during restoration.

As I took photos, a local woman in a car stopped at the red light and told me to "keep my eyes open". What? "Lappi tue d'Augen uf, that's what it says on the tower". I noticed it just after crossing back over.

When the tower was restored in the 1930s ("Renoviert 1933" is just visible above the relief), a road junction had appeared before it, and this sign was added to warn people walking around near the Schwabentor.

Another addition are the clocks, each surrounded by a painting which are clearly 20th-century works. Carl Roesch's tableaux are called Kosmos on the South side, Kreislauf ("Cycle") on the North side, and they depict our lives in the vastness of space, and subject to the inexorable march of time, and Death can be seen at the top of the clock above: modern style it may be, but the symbols are classics.

The trains the E10 will replace

Following the announcement of a new Shinkansen type due to enter service on the Tôhoku Shinkansen in 2030, let's have a quick look at the oldest trains on the line, that will be replaced.

The E2 is the oldest high-speed train type that JR East owns, and many examples have already been retired. Built for the slower Jôetsu route to Niigata, they operate the Yamabiko and all-stop Nasuno services.

The E10s will also replace E5 sets. This sounds unreal to me, the E5 is the pinnacle of Shinkansen, still the only train running at 320 km/h in Japan (coupled with the E6, when the couplings work), and still young, having been introduced in 2011! Granted, by 2030, the first E5s will be nearly 20 years old, but they're probably not going to disappear completely in one go.

Photos taken at Utsunomiya station (as far North as I've ever been in Japan).

Sarreguemines station

One more border station between France and Germany, with a bit of a twist. Sarreguemines in Lorraine is, as its name suggests, on one side of the river Sarre or Saar, with Saarbrücken some 17 km downstream in Germany. Between the two runs a cross-border tram-train, which serves as urban transit within Saarbrücken, and as a small regional train beyond.

The vehicles used by the Saarbahn are dual-voltage (750 V DC for city tram lines, 15 kV AC for DB train lines) Flexity Link units, made by Bombardier. It's the third type of tram-train we've come across, having seen the Siemens Avanto in Mulhouse and the Alstom Citadis Dualis in Châteaubriant. Most trams in Saarbrücken are wrapped in some kind of advertisement, this one for a former exhibit at the former Völklingen Ironworks (something I definitely should talk about someday) - not only did the exhibit end in 2024, but the wrapping is dark, making the atmosphere onboard very dull indeed, especially on a grey day! They didn't think this one though!

Only the one track for the Saarbahn is electrified, so the French trains are all Diesel units. On the day I was there, three generations of DMU were present: the most recent bi-mode Regiolis, a Diesel-only AGC set from the early 2000s (top picture), and a pair of A TER railcars which are equipped for German signalling. A few direct Strasbourg-Saarbrücken services run each day with these "saucisses" as they are nicknamed. We've seen these trains before too - the design is identical to the BR 641s DB Regio have near Basel, and these are nicknamed "Walfisch" in German.

Space Port Kii (from a distance)

Japanese company Space One has been in the news recently for their second attempt at launching their rocket, Kairos - for Kii-based Advanced & Instant ROcket System; as far as acronyms go, I'd give it a 5/10, it's rather long-winded but has some good ideas at the right moments. The rocket, designed to be a cheaper option for lighter satellites, unfortunately didn't make it into orbit, losing control after 95 seconds.

The launch site is located on the North-East edge of Kushimoto, Honshû's southernmost city, its entrance building visible from the railway line. The action area is further into the woods, by the coast. I didn't visit the site obviously, but the entrance and some support posters in Kushimoto town were hints of the project's presence. They have a neat little mascot too, a space puppy!

As the maths problems take a break, maybe we can have a brief pub quiz. So...

Q. What's that building on the 10-yen coin?

A. The Phoenix Hall at Byôdô-in, Uji.

Initially built as a villa by a member of the Minamoto clan just before the year 1000, the land was sold not long after to members of a rival clan, the Fujiwaras, who turned it into a Buddhist temple named Byôdô-in in 1052. The most striking feature of the temple is the Amida Hall, which with time gained the name Phoenix Hall due to its overall appearance: the two outer corridors are the wings, and a corridor extending behind is the tail.

At the same time, tea production was picking up in Uji, and by the 14th century, Uji tea had become well renowned. I need to go back there someday, my first visit was just an afternoon flick after completing the climb of Mt Inari in the morning. I thought of going back there in the summer of 2023, but couldn't quite make time for it.

Fruit, glorious fruit!

Little did I know until yesterday, the vineyards and orchards near Oberkirch, on the edge of the Black Forest, are magnificent at this time of year! Now I think of it, I didn't see any cherries, and apparently they are in season... maybe I just missed them. As for what they make with all this fruit in Germany, well...

That'll be schnaps.

Available in all good drink huts along the hiking trail! A friend and I saw a self-service drinks cabinet on another hike to the North of Oberkirch, but this circuit was on another level. I must have seen at least four drinks stops, ranging from a cabinet with a cash box to a full-fledged hut with shade and benches. It appears to be a local speciality, and I'd say this sells it quite well!

It's quite the feeling to enjoy a cold schorle (fizzy water with a dash of juice, I passed on the schnaps because I don't go for alcohol) with an incredible view on the way back down a hill on a hot day!

Eckwersheim rail accident memorial

On the northern edge of the Strasbourg Metropolitan Area, the high-speed railway line crosses the Marne-to-Rhine Canal (of which I've said quite a lot recently) and curves to the South to join the trunk line into Strasbourg. It was here, on 14 November 2015, in the months prior to this section opening, that a test train derailed catastrophically, killing 11 and injuring 42.

The immediate cause of the derailment was over-speed: the crew had failed to brake in advance of the curve and headed into it 90 km/h faster than they should have. The reasons for this failure are a point of contention; as far as I have understood, the accident report hasn't managed to clearly identify them as there was no voice recorder in the driver's cab. The accident has been in the news recently as the trial of the driving crew and the companies involved has just taken place, with the verdict due to be returned in October.

I have been travelling on the accident tracks for years, and possibly since the first time I took the TGV to Strasbourg in 2017, I have made a note of this particular curve, recognising the red bridges from those terrible pictures from the news, not out of anxiety, but out of awareness of what had taken place. Knowing that a memorial garden sits there, and with the court case wrapping up, I decided to go out and see it in person.

Quite isolated from outside noise by the two elevated train tracks either side, and with the canal and paths ahead, the atmosphere there is indeed very peaceful. A large plaque recalls the event, while 11 stones are scattered around the site for the deceased.

"En hommage aux victimes et aux personnes profondément touchées par l'accident de la rame d'essais du 14 novembre 2015, à celles et ceux qui nous ont quittés"

Japan Weekend coming up!

This weekend, in fact! Every April, Strasbourg hosts some ekiden running races, and a festival of Japanese culture on the side. Taiko drums, shamisen, martial art demos including kyûdô and aikidô, Japan-inspired artists, food... and games like shôgi and mah-jong, the latter of which I will be partaking in as a member of the Strasbourg club. So if perchance you are in Strasbourg this weekend, pop by!

60 Years of the Tokaido Shinkansen!

On 1 October 1964, a railway line like no other opened. Connecting Tôkyô and Ôsaka, paralleling an existing main line, the Tôkaidô New Trunk Line had minimal curves, lots of bridges, zero level crossings. Striking white and blue electric multiple units, with noses shaped like bullets some would say, started zooming between the two cities as at the unheard-of speed of 210 km/h.

This was the start of the Shinkansen, inaugurating the age of high-speed rail.

The trains, with noses actually inspired by the aircraft of the time, originally didn't have a name, they were just "Shinkansen trains", as they couldn't mingle with other types anyway due to the difference in gauge between the Shinkansen (standard gauge, 1435 mm between rails) and the rest of the network (3'6" gauge, or 1067 mm between rails). The class would officially become the "0 Series" when new trains appeared in the 1980s, first the very similar 200 Series for the second new line, the Tôhoku Shinkansen, then the jet-age 100 Series. Yes, the 200 came first, as it was decided that trains heading North-East from Tôkyô would be given even first numbers, and trains heading West would have odd first numbers (0 is even, but never mind).

Hence the next new type to appear on the Tôkaidô Shinkansen was the 300 Series (second from left), designed by the privatised JR Tôkai to overcome some shortcomings of the line. Indeed, the curves on the Tôkaidô were still too pronounced to allow speeds to be increased, while all other new lines had been built ready for 300 km/h operations. But a revolution in train design allowed speeds to be raised from 220 km/h in the 80s to 285 km/h today, with lightweight construction (on the 300), active suspension (introduced on the 700 Series, left) and slight tilting (standard on the current N700 types).

Examples of five generations of train used on the Tôkaidô Shinkansen are preserved at JR Tôkai's museum, the SCMaglev & Railway Park, in Nagoya, with the N700 prototype lead car outdoors. It's striking to see how far high-speed train technology has come in Japan in 60 years. The network itself covers the country almost end-to-end, with a nearly continuous line from Kyûshû to Hokkaidô along the Pacific coast (no through trains at Tôkyô), and four branch lines inland and to the North coast, one of which recently got extended.

東海道新幹線、お誕生日おめでおう！

The "Witch's Eye" - Engelbourg Castle ruins, Thann

For what it's worth, Prince Albert II of Monaco is visiting Thann in the South of Alsace this weekend, as he is also Count of Ferrette. Held by the Austrian Habsburgs for a while, the title was bestowed upon Cardinal Mazarin, a prime minister to King Louis XIV, following the French conquest of Alsace in the 1640s. A member of House Mazarin married the Prince of Monaco in 1777 and that's how the title ended up where it is today. I don't plan to explain the origin of the other bazillion oddball titles the Prince of Monaco holds...

It's just a pretext to mention Engelbourg Castle, built by the Counts of Ferrette in the 13th century on a hill above Thann. The French Counts wouldn't benefit from it for too long: as it lay too far from the German border to be of strategic value, the same Louis XIV ordered its demolition in 1673. But, as you can probably tell from the photo, something weird happened during the process. The cylindrical dungeon came apart in segments, and one of these landed on its side. For whatever reason, it was left there, creating a unique landmark known as the "Witch's Eye", as an echo to the "Witch's Tower" in the town of Thann, but all it reminds me of is Polo mints.

A short hike uphill from Thann, it also offers nice views of the valley and the vineyards on the neighbouring hills.