I’m taking photos as I walk along the Kominato Railway. I went back one station from Tsukizaki Station in the direction of the top of the line, and came to Itabu Station, which is a difficult-to-read station and also known as a place famous for its cherry blossoms.
Unfortunately, it was cloudy for those who wanted to take pictures of the cherry blossoms against a blue sky, but it was quite busy with men and women of all ages from various countries.
It was just the time when the sightseeing Satoyama Trolley train was arriving, so I left the station and waited by the tracks to take a picture.
The first car, which is a diesel locomotive modeled on the C-type Koppel steam locomotive, is perfectly captured with the rape blossoms in the foreground.
I turned around to face the station and took another photo while watching the back of the train surrounded by flowers.
You’ll see this distinctive train again later, with its distinctive rear view and headmark.
This station is known for the beautiful reflection photos you can take of the cherry blossoms, station and train in the adjacent rice paddies. However, on this day the weather was bad with a cloudy sky, light rain and a wind that disturbed the surface of the water, so I gave up on the reflection photos.
Instead, after much deliberation over how to take the photo, I finally decided on a composition that I thought would work, and waited patiently for the trolley train to come back around.
I waited for about an hour. Here it comes! Huh?
I was a little surprised.
I was waiting for the ‘steam locomotive’ to show its heroic side at the front, but the train that came back did not change direction and just went back the same way.
I wonder if the Kominato Railway doesn’t have a turntable, or rather, if you think about it, it would be a lot of work to build a turntable for this purpose. I wonder if the “steam locomotive” came pushing along from behind in the opposite direction, or if it was originally a formation with diesel cars on both ends that could be pulled in both directions? Either way, the “steam locomotive” is now attached to the back of the train, facing backwards… that’s a bit of a problem for the photo.
While I was surprised, I thought about a few things at once, and then I decided to take a photo without the “steam locomotive” at the back of the train being visible, so I adjusted the composition slightly and then took the photo quite calmly. I think the experience of making a mistake when I panicked at the unexpected thing that happened at the previous station Tsukizaki, came in handy here as a lesson learned.
Finally, a shot of the reflection of the cherry blossoms on the water from the same spot, taken when there were no trains around.
The weather and the photographer’s skill were far from perfect, so the photo quality is not great, but I wanted to take a photo to show my appreciation for the kindness of the local people who went to the trouble of filling the rice fields with water to welcome the photographers at this time of year.
So that was the story of Itabu Station.
I still have about one more article’s worth of photos left from my Kominato Railway photo walk.
