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I was at Tokorozawa Station riding my favorite Shinjuku Line trains this past weekend, and noticed this, but didn't know until I came across this video today that songs from Studio Ghbili's My Neighbor Totoro had become the official departure melody for the station from Nov. 3. Appropriate as the scenes from the movie were inspired by locales in that area of Saitama.

Thought some people might like this. Started on Dec.25. Location near Saitama Shintoshin Station.

JR East will be opening a railway goods shop called General Store Railyard in the west concourse of Omiya Station. At the link below you can find a pdf illustrating some of the items available. Among other goodies, a few must-haves: JR East pajamas as used on the Hokutosei sleeper service parts pulled from retired rolling stock dining car beef curry Hokutosei spoon and fork set decals as used inside E233 series cars to indicate car designation/number, decals displaying depot and passenger capacity towels, key chains, stationery Kato E651 Swallow Akagi limited edition model This will open Saturday, March 25, 2017. JR East, please take my money. Courtesy of Railfan News. http://railf.jp/news/2017/03/09/174500.html

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0003461096

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I noticed that Google Street View (or more accurately, interior view) lets you roam around inside JR East's museum in Omiya, Saitama. Notice that in the lower right of your browser you can choose between three floors and the roof. Useful for those of us who can't seem to get that Japanese vacation organized :) :( https://www.google.com/maps/@35.9205395,139.6182968,3a,75y,182.93h,85.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1stcl8JMA9XN9JNmg0VxQw8A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

In 2017, JR East will update and expand its Railway Museum near Omiya Station. It will be the museum's 10th anniversary, and 30th anniversary of the establishment of the company itself. Built south of the existing structure, the addition will raise the museum's total display space to 14,800 square meters, about 1.5 times its present size. There will be various themes including work, history, the future, and travel in the context of railways, in addition to the main hall's themes of rolling stock and science, presenting a variety of view points on the history of railways and people. The "work" themed area will include E5 and 400 series shinkansen rolling stock, as well as a new E5 simulator with a dramatic, high resolution panorama-sized screen. http://railf.jp/news/2014/11/06/173000.html

This came up in Tetsudou Fan's newsfeed twice in the last few days: http://railf.jp/news/2014/03/15/194500.html http://railf.jp/news/2014/03/13/150000.html The functions served by this Nippon Paper Industries warehouse will be moved to Soka City in Saitama, and there are no other customers on the line. Official decommissioning will be July 1st, but it saw its last revenue train on March 14th around 2:45 PM. Fortunately the railfans were on site and have provided some nice YouTube videos: DE10 1666 on its way to Kita-Oji Station, by dd51de10 Arriving at Kita-Oji Station (basically Nippon Paper's loading dock, as far as I can tell) and then leaving with the last load, by tebure1 Back to Tabata yard, by dd51de10 A run-by at Oji passenger station, by Daisuke FUJII: Paper or printing operations at this site go back to May 1910. Japan's National Printing Bureau had a printshop near or on this site at that time, and the station was known as Shimo-Jujo. Oji Paper acquired this in 1916, and permission to operate a spur was obtained in August 1926. Transport began soon after, with chemical companies being providing other work for the line. In the early Showa period, Japan's armament industry was expanding, and as this line served an armory near Oji 6-chome, it was nationalized under the Ministry of Railways on December 20, 1927. The line was not electrified, but because of the munitions there was hesitation about using steam locomotives, so the battery-powered AB10 was developed for this application. It seems that it was electrified at some point; pantographs were added to the AB10s in 1931 and they were reclassified as type EB10. Factories and warehouses along the line continued to operate in peacetime, and at its peak in 1969, the line saw 5 trains daily. Recently, Nippon Paper's warehouse has had 3 services per day. In the second google map below, you can see the station's yard, which looks like good source of inspiration for a layout . There are 4 sidings plus the main track at the platform. There's a fair bit of switching, which appears to provide escape track for a locomotive toward the north end of any track in the yard. Kind of a shame about closing this down, I think these freight spurs (this was 4km long) add operational interest and a bit of mystery in that as a passenger, it's difficult to figure out what they're for and where they go, and they provide something for me to read about on Wikipedia . It's also unfortunate from a practical point of view; according to the station's wikipedia page (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E7%8E%8B%E5%AD%90%E9%A7%85 in Japanese) tonnage was going up from about 1998 to 2008, the last year that figures are provided on that page. Nippon Paper currently has a warehouse in Soka City Aoyagi 1-chome. It's not clear if this is the facility taking on the work of the Kita-Oji Warehouse, but if it is, it has no rail connection. The line starts somewhere in Tabata yard: http://goo.gl/maps/qizQJ And after passing Oji and Kami-Nakazato, it splits off and ends at the warehouse, here: http://goo.gl/maps/5lc5M