Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Himeji had a monorail?!?!

I posted this photo a week ago or so guessing that it was a beam from a former JR or Sanyo Railway line.

Himeji-SanyoRwy-2


anonymous commenter stated that this could be from the old Himeji Monorail (!?!?!) which I never heard of before just now. I guess there was one. This pdf (good reading if you want to know about all the monorails in Japan btw) has some information on the monorail. It states that the Himeji Monorail was in operation from 1966 to 1974. Not even 10 years! In their first year of operation the monorail only took on 1000 passengers a day, 1/3 of the expected ridership, which fell in the following years. There were ideas about connecting it to Himeji castle and to the port but both of those fell through. Sounds like Springfield.

Thanks for the comment anonymous!

I also found this YouTube video which shows the same pillar:


1 comment:

angryparsnip said...

It doesn't look like it really went anywhere?
loved the You Tube clip, I really miss Japanese morning/afternoon talk shows