On a single site there's a driving wheel from a D51 locomotive and a monument to the Railway Song (Tetsudō Shōka). A mini-mini holy site for railways. You find driving wheels like this all over the country, huh. What's amazing is that the wheels are sooo huge, but what really impresses me is that the width of these wheels is still used on most of Japan's railways today. Since it's narrower than standard gauge, this width is called narrow gauge (kyōki). Standard gauge is 1,435mm wide, and I heard it goes back to ancient Roman times when two horses pulled a cart side by side. The history of infrastructure scale is amazing, isn't it? By the way, standard gauge is the track width of the Shinkansen and Keikyu. A bit wider, right? Narrow gauge is 1,067mm. Some people say that because the tracks are narrow, the cars can't be wide, so they get packed at rush hour. But well, Keikyu gets packed too, so I guess the wider it is, the more passengers will ride. Still, to think of putting such a heavy-looking steam locomotive on something just over 1 meter wide, people back then really had strong faith in iron. I'll transcribe the text on the information board. ###### D51 Locomotive Driving Wheel The D51 class locomotive was born in 1936 (Showa 11). Over 10 years, 1,115 units were built, the most for any single class of Japanese steam locomotive, and it was active in all parts of the country both before and after the war, mainly for freight. Affectionately known by nicknames such as "Degoichi," it became synonymous with steam locomotives and remained heavily used until the last SL run in 1975 (Showa 50), fulfilling its mission. The driving wheel on display was received from the Sapporo Railway Management Bureau in Hokkaido to commemorate the start of through service on the Sobu and Yokosuka Lines in 1976 (Showa 51), and was installed at Shimbashi Station, the birthplace of railways. #####