Former JNR Taketoyo Port Station Turntable

A Turntable Built for Freight Wagons

Former JNR Taketoyo Port Station Turntable (旧国鉄武豊港駅転車台, Kyū Kokutetsu Taketoyo Minato Eki Tenshadai) is an iron railway turntable of 1927 standing on the site of the old Taketoyo Port Station in Taketoyo Town, Chita District, Aichi Prefecture, and it was entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on 8 January 2009. It measures 7.5 metres across. The Agency for Cultural Affairs classifies it under transport and other constructed works, and gives the registration criterion as something not easily reproduced.

Most turntables that survive in Japan sit in front of a roundhouse and were built to swing steam locomotives. This one did a different job. It turned goods wagons. Taketoyo Town records that Japanese National Railways installed it in February 1927 so that wagons could be reversed within a cramped yard.

The land here faces Kinuura Bay and once formed the yard of Taketoyo Port Station. Cargo came off ships, went onto rails, and headed inland. The turntable was one piece of that transfer machinery.

Two Tracks Crossing at a Right Angle

What sets Former JNR Taketoyo Port Station Turntable apart is how the girders are arranged. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes two deck type plate girders, each 7.3 metres long, laid across each other at their midpoints so that they meet at ninety degrees. Seen from above, the rails form a cross.

The load travels through two kinds of support. A hemispherical bearing sits at the centre of the circle, and wheels run under the four girder ends. Bear at the middle, roll at the rim. That is the whole mechanism.

An ordinary turntable carries a single track, so a wagon has to be rotated and then rotated back to reach a siding on another alignment. With two tracks set at right angles, a quarter turn is enough to deliver the wagon onto a different line. Fewer movements, and a shunting operation that fits into a small site.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that few examples of this right angle two track type survive anywhere in the country. Taketoyo Town goes further and describes it as an industrial relic of railway engineering history that can be seen nowhere else in Japan. The registration criterion, something not easily reproduced, follows from that rarity.

Former JNR Taketoyo Port Station Turntable was repaired in 2002, and became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property seven years later, in 2009.

Seeing It at Tenshadai Pocket Park

Taketoyo Town now owns the turntable, which sits at the centre of a small park named Tenshadai Pocket Park. According to the town's newsletter, the park opened on 1 April 2007 and covers 634 square metres, immediately west of the Taketoyo Town Community Exchange Centre. Local people know it by the nickname Kaiten Poppo Dai.

Besides the turntable, the park holds a monument, a train shaped play structure, toilets, benches, a shelter, a drinking fountain and a car park. Kurume azaleas, euonymus, turf and cherry trees have been planted, so in spring the ironwork sits under blossom.

Start with the dimension. Locomotive turntables commonly exceed twenty metres in diameter. At 7.5 metres, Former JNR Taketoyo Port Station Turntable is roughly a third of that, which is the size a single freight wagon required. Stand where the two girders intersect and look down, and the cross of rails reads at once.

The girders repay a second look as well. A plate girder is built up from steel plate and angle sections, and in the 1920s those parts were joined with rivets rather than welds. The heads of those rivets are still there to count.

Visiting Former JNR Taketoyo Port Station Turntable

Because it stands in an open park, Former JNR Taketoyo Port Station Turntable has no opening hours and no admission charge, and photography is unrestricted. It is a neighbourhood park, so expect children on the play equipment nearby.

By train, use Taketoyo Station on the JR Taketoyo Line. Taketoyo Town explains that the rails once continued about one kilometre beyond the present terminus towards the harbour to reach Taketoyo Port Station. Part of that trackbed is now Ushiroda Pocket Park, a cherry lined walking path, and the turntable lies just past National Route 247. Allow about fifteen minutes on foot. Chita Taketoyo Station on the Meitetsu Kōwa Line is a similar distance away.

Drivers will find parking at the park itself, close to the Satonaka area on National Route 247.

Two addresses circulate for the site. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives 9-8 Michisenda, while the town's own page gives Chūhakuda, reflecting a position near the boundary between two adjoining land sections. Both refer to the same place.