Japanese railways.

[Quantumspotter]

Hello there again,

Similar to my previous post on European railways, I am looking for help in either, some useful websites/books that you could recommend. I have seen some great YouTube videos on various Japanese railways and been taken back by the whole thing. Spectacular to say the least. Many thanks.

Quantumspotter.

 

[WideRanger]

What do you want to know? History, travel tips, timetables?

 

[dutchflyer]

Start with skyscrapercity.org - railways- fora.
There are giant nrs of pretty picture books on JPN-railways, but all I've seen are in Japanese only. And only for sale over there.
JPN still has commercial train timetable books, published monthly and for sale at every kiosk.
For the NON-JR local transits the most recent are 3 volumes of the well-known series urbantransit (see site .org of that name) by a german, in bi-lingual /en/ and /de/. Neat network maps, general info and some pix. Ian Allan shops stock them in the UK or order online.

 

[I13]

Wikipedia is fairly good, there are articles on most lines/stations/trains. Some articles might be very basic, out of date, or awkwardly translated from Japanese, but still very useful overall.

 

[Three-Nine]

For planning train journeys in Japan, or just toying around for "pretend", I've often used HyperDia - www.HyperDia.com. Just make sure to deselect travel options you might not be interested in, lest you wind up with travel times given for buses and the like.

Kyoto Railway Museum has a website at www.kyotorailwaymuseum.jp/en/, but thats obviously mostly about information for visiting the museum than on the exhibits themselves.

 

[WideRanger]

For planning train journeys in Japan, or just toying around for "pretend", I've often used HyperDia - www.HyperDia.com. Just make sure to deselect travel options you might not be interested in, lest you wind up with travel times given for buses and the like.

Hyperdia is great - and the Japanese version of the site is what Japanese people use. If you get really familiar it can be powerful: as well as doing journey planning, you can use it to extract complete timetables between specific station. Be careful - sometimes it changes AM times to PM times with no seeming reason.

https://www.japan-guide.com/ is also really good. It gives pretty comprehensive information on all transport options, and provides helpful links. Of course, it is aimed more at regular travellers than enthusiasts.

 

[Three-Nine]

The "AM to PM" thing wouldn't be because theres a long gap between services (for example, at the end of the day until the following morning) or accidentally selecting a sleeper service by any chance? I know I've been caught out before doing that using that service.

 

[WideRanger]

The "AM to PM" thing wouldn't be because theres a long gap between services (for example, at the end of the day until the following morning) or accidentally selecting a sleeper service by any chance? I know I've been caught out before doing that using that service.

No - it's just a strange quirk with the way the website works. Happens most often when changing the journey speification.

 

[Three-Nine]

Okay, just curious.