Saturday 5 May 2012

Tokyo Monorail, Water Front Line to the Airport


EMU Tokyo Monorail 1000 series (special color) arrives at Oi-keibajo-mae Station

As I introduced in my blog on July 9th, 2011, the Tokyo Monorail- Haneda Line is the oldest monorail, which adopts a straddle-beam system, in Tokyo. It was completed in 1964 as an airport access route from downtown Tokyo to Tokyo International Airport (Haneda).

One of the features of the Haneda Line is its railway track. Most of the sections were constructed on the canal-sides, the river-sides and the seashore. Obviously, it is because of saving construction cost. In this case, using the above places will be easy to secure construction sites for the monorail track. Look at the bottom photo. It is the track near Oi-keibajo-mae Station. You can see that the concrete track piers stand on the canal side.

This enables the passengers to secure superb views from the train windows. For instance, we can see the Tokyo Tower (a 333m high broadcasting tower), Rainbow Bridge (a road and Yurikamome-AGT railway line crossing the Tokyo Bay), Airstrips of the Tokyo International Airport and Mt. Fuji (3776m high, the highest mountain in Japan). For your information, you can enjoy the scenic views on the following website provided by cat2525jp.


 
Scenic veiw from the train window on the Haneda Line
Video: Courtesy "cat2525jp", large screen version is here


In Tokyo, pleasant air travel is initiated by enjoying superb views from the airport access monorail train.

EMU Tokyo Monorail 1000 series (standard color) runs by Keihin Canal

More scenic videos by "cat2525jp": http://www.youtube.com/user/cat2525jp