Meitetsu & Kintetsu Commuter Lines of Nagoya

I am back with another set of stories from Nagoya. As you are aware 1st weekend was spent at the SCMaglev and Railway Park after travelling on the private line from Nagoya to Kunji-foto called the Aonami line. Second weekend was spent on thrilling rides through the Maglev or the Linimo Line.Followed by a sprint across all the Subway lines of Nagoya. 3rd weekend plan was to traverse the largest private railways player in Nagoya called the Meitetsu Railroads. My first trip on Meitetsu commuter lines was from the Chubu Airport or the Centrair Airport on the artificial Island to Nagoya Station.So without much ado, let me share the map of Meitetsu commuter lines for easy reference ( well not so easy with Japanese names and so many lines).

If you add the Nagoya Subway , Aonami, Linimo, Kintetsu and JR lines, you know how difficult this one will be to read.

I had been looking for a cheap ride option on the Meitetsu line like a one day pass(which i used on the Nagoya Subway lines).But, there was no such facility here. It is expensive to travel and can easily burn a minimum 500 Yen for a return trip on the smallest section. Anyways, neither did I have any choice nor did I want to return back after having a golden opportunity to ride these. So, I settled for the Manaca IC cards, which is pretty much like a Go Mumbai Card which can be used on almost all lines and appropriate fare is deducted at Automatic Fare Collection gates.

I started around 11:30 am with an aim to touch at least the vertices of all the diverging lines on the Meitetsu Railroad network. I charged the Manaca IC card with 2000 Yen to cover for my expenses of the day.Nagoya is like a super structure station which houses all the lines under one ambit. So we have all the platforms scattered and all are numbered by the private rail entities.It can be damn confusing to find out especially with too much of pointers everywhere and to make matters worse not everything is in English.

Red Livery Meitetsu Commuter waiting to start from Nagoya. Its a Dual Discharge platform but same platforms are used with space differentiators to segregate crowd.

So a platform is long enough to accommodate two 6 coacher trains with a space between the 2 trains for segregation at halt positions.This helps in crowd segregation while they wait at different locations on the same platform for their respective trains to different destinations.

I took a train to Saya on the south west corner of the map with a plan to get off at Sukaguchi.Seating inside the car is an all cushioned affair with a dated feel.

As we head out of Nagoya, we come out of Underground Station and go on elevated stretches. Centrair Meitetsu train  can be seen in the above video.

If you zoom in, you might see the Shinkansen speeding over another bridge in the distance. They use completely different alignments.

There are 4 car and 6 car consists with every 2nd coach having a pantograph.

After my first stop, I decide to head towards the North. There are local trains, semi express, express and limited express trains, all varying as per their stopping patterns.

Some of the newer Meitetsu trains also have longitudinal seating.I noticed that there are loop platforms at most limited stop stations with a 2 coacher local waiting for people to disembark and get into this smaller local to smaller wayside stations.

While going to Gifu, I had to get off at Ichinomiya and then take the above train ride to Gifu. These look much newer to those old red livery ones.I was about to get a ride up front soon. Instead of sitting inside, I decided to stand by the partition which separates the Motorman from passengers and noticed that the train is pulled at a maximum speed of 120kmph.

That's the view from here and motorman is standing on the left

It was like playing Microsoft Train Simulator, standing at the front.This was an express to Gifu, skipping some small stations, if you notice there was a freight movement on the extreme right towards the middle of the above video. We were hitting 120 kmph.

A zoomed pic of the Motorman console

One more crossing

This bridge had a PSR, I could notice the motorman refer to a document placed at his shoulder height and dropping speed instantly.

At Gifu, I had to change trains and this small miniscule 2 coach train was ready to take me to Inuyama on the Green line.

One of the many videos while waiting at Gifu.

 Different generations of Meitetsu Trains.

These seats can be moved into the direction of travel, which is so thoughtful.

 Some sections use Concrete sleepers whereas some are using wooden sleepers.

For those who are interested in the overhead apparatus.

I went all the way to Shinauto in the south and came back thus touching almost all the vertices. It was almost 4 pm and there was more time for action before sunset approaches, I came back to Nagoya and tried the Kintetsu pvt railways.They are supposed to go far and wide beyond the Aichi Region into Osaka and Kyoto. Technically they are serving more places in Japan than any other as they cross regions much like JR Shinkansen. But Kintetsu lines are far more deeper than JR which run only on core high speed routes.

Kintetsu have some amazing livery trains.To confuse you further here is Kintetsu railway map for Nagoya, which is on the far north east side of this map. I am headed to Kuwana the first yellow vertex from Nagoya.

Thats a Kintetsu local train at Kuwana which stops at all stations enroute.

An older 2 coach train waiting for a small spur called Okaisi

 The seats are 2X2 and trains are longer in Kintetsu Main line trains.

There are some coaches with reserved cars too. To all ICF fans who would like to see one doors in one coach, there are some like that here.

This is the limited express to Nagoya at Kuwana and if you need to board this then you can purchase an additional ticket on the platform itself and board it.

Limited express with Double Decker in its consist. The windows are vistadome type. Lower deck also accomodate commuters but is primarily acting as a pantry.

A normal express to Nagoya.

 Guard's View at the rear.

This line crosses a lot of bridges as its near the sea port.

One of the major bridges captured on my phone, while we head back to Nagoya.

The above video shows you the river and lot of paddy fields on the outskirts of Nagoya. Rice is a major cereal used by Japanese. You can also spot a carshed.

This one runs to some popular tourist destination and I was in complete awe of its design, the windows and the double decker coaches as well as the nose of the train also looks so different. We can also spot some other railfans.Coolest thing about Japanese trains is that nobody bothers to stop you from clicking pictures or videos, unlike India. In fact, they are very proud of their trains.

Then I came across this with its curvy design and cute little diamond pantograph.In the Underground sections, they use rail overhead instead of wires as done in some sections of DMRC.Its 7 pm  by now and I head back home.

There is one more weekend to go and I hope to ride the Shinkansen before heading back to Bengaluru. Fingers Crossed. Thank you for your patience.