Why People “Want to Ride Freight Trains”… A Surprising Reason Why a Medical Journalist Wrote a Freight Train Accompaniment

After 40 years… covering the original landscape of my childhood

Railroad fans have been subdivided into such categories as “train riders,” “train takers,” and so on. However, a book has appeared that sets itself apart from the various books for such railroad fans.

Let’s go on a freight train! (Bungeishunju) was written by medical journalist Shoni Nagata. Why this book?

I am not what you would call an “iron geek. But I have loved looking at maps since I was a child, and when I look at railroad route maps, I see some routes I have ridden before and some I have never ridden before, and I want to ride something I have never ridden before.

So I asked the adults around me, “How can I get on one of these? They told me, ‘You can’t ride it because it’s a freight line,’ so I became interested in freight trains.

Mr. Nagata, who was living in Yokohama at the time, recalls that he used to ride his bicycle after school to see the freight lines and freight trains in the port department.

She recalls, “It was lonely, the atmosphere. Unlike passenger lines, the tracks were covered with weeds, and you wondered if a train would really come running in such a desolate place, but then it would suddenly appear from far away, and you would be impressed.

It was not until he was over 50 years old that he was “reunited” with the original scenery of freight trains in earnest.

An editor asked me, “Since you are always working hard in the medical field, why don’t you write about your favorite theme once in a while?” I started a series of articles in the monthly “Bungei Shunju” magazine, “Zubari Tokyo 50 Years Later” (August ’16 to January ’19), in which various authors report on Tokyo’s old scenery. (August 2004-January 2007 issue, later published as a new book titled “Heisei no Tokyo: 12 Faces of Tokyo”). The first thing that came to mind was freight stations.

When I mentioned that I wanted to cover the older Sumidagawa Station, the editor, who did not know the situation, said, “In any case, why don’t you take us on a freight train? I thought there was no way he would take me on a freight train.

I thought there was no way they would take me on a freight train, but I asked JR Freight for an interview and, on the spur of the moment, asked them to take me on a ride. When I told them about my passion for freight trains since childhood, they took me seriously and agreed.

Unexpected response, “Importance of Freight Railroads” revealed through the interview

When the article was published on Bunshun Online, there was an unexpected response. The article was so well received that it was repeated two or three times, and then published as a book, he says.