Tag Archives: SCMaglev

Vintage Japanese Rolling Stock

Here are some old Japanese rail vehicles.  These are part of the SCMaglev museum in Nagoya that I visited when I was in Japan last summer.  The museum has a great selection of Shinkansen equipment across the generations but it also has a lot of other rail vehicles from long ago.  The vehicles clearly look old from the outside but the interiors are really an interesting comparison with what you see these days.  The amount of wood in the paneling and the materials of the seating are definitely of their time.  I was quite amused by the fans mounted on the ceiling.  Obviously pre-air conditioning days with these cars and so a bit of air circulation was all you could hope for.  Knowing how incredibly hot it gets in Japan during the summer, they would not have done much for the riders I would have thought.  I wonder whether it was as crowded in those days as it is now.  If it was even close, that would have been brutal.