aomori-hokkaido for steam trains

[worldrailboy]

I tried look it up for a while but my poor japanese is of no help to me again so I decided it'll be better to try ask here as usual here's the question, how did trains get over that body of water before the 1980's?

as far as I can tell I'm going to guess maybe ferry but I'm sure I might be wrong

[Nick_Burman]

Yes, by train ferry. One of the most dangerous train ferry connections (because of the unpredictable weather) in the world while it ran.

Cheers NB

[Kumo]

In Aomori you can visit one of those ferries, the Hakoda-Maru. It's not an amazing visit but you can see the train hangar in the ship.
There is also a quite big expo about the ferries connexion and train transit, unfortunately, almost nothing is translated in English...

http://japon.loriskumo.com/2010/07/aomori-derniere-etape-sur-honshu/

[bikkuri bahn]

To clarify, the ferries only carried freight cars on their lower deck.  Passengers had to get off their trains at Aomori, board the JNR ferry, and then board their trains at Hakodate to get to their final destinations. It was a tiring process for travelers, as the fastest schdules often involved transfers in the wee hours of the morning, to insure a mid-day arrival in Sapporo.

[worldrailboy]

found this while doing a short search for hakoda-maru
http://www.japaneserailwaysociety.com/jrs/members/pearce/ships/ships2.htm
interesting extra history tidbits there especially the last paragraph

[Nick_Burman]

To clarify, the ferries only carried freight cars on their lower deck.  Passengers had to get off their trains at Aomori, board the JNR ferry, and then board their trains at Hakodate to get to their final destinations. It was a tiring process for travelers, as the fastest schdules often involved transfers in the wee hours of the morning, to insure a mid-day arrival in Sapporo.

JNR could have ran direct sleeper services on the ferries, however they were scared stiff of having people drown inside coaches if a ferryboat sank en route (as it happened one particular episode where several ferries sank at the same time during a storm, can't remember the year it happened offhand). Charles Small recounts in "Rails to the Rising Sun" (which I'm reading yet again as I write now, always fun... ) that JNR used to take down passenger lists in case of an eventuality.

Cheers NB