Japan’s stunning 8-mile rail bridge over the sea

Japan’s stunning 8-mile rail bridge over the sea

Good morning. I’m still Jeremy and I’m here at Okyama Station. This is a major train station in western or central Japan. Basically, the main station between Coobe City and uh Hiroshima City. Many, many train lines go through here or start or stop here, including the Shinkansen. The train I’m taking is called the Marine Liner and it goes on the Great Sto Bridge, which is actually a series of bridges, eight miles suspended over the water. I’ve never taken it before, so I can’t wait to get on it. So, let’s go ride across floating majestically over the water for over 8 miles and the rest of the way all the way from here to Takamatsu on the Marine Liner. The Marine Lin or Express train service between Okyama and Takamatsu started in April 1988 when the Sto Ohashi or Great Sto Bridge bridge opened across the Setto Inland Sea. I haven’t actually bought my tickets yet, but marine liners leave about twice an hour. Have to wait in this short line. I hope people aren’t buying my seat. On Marine Liner trains, all the seats on all cars are non-reserved, so you scramble and fight for a seat you want when the doors open, except for the front car. That one is reserved seats, which of course cost a bit more. But the best of all is the reserved car is an unusual double-decker car. The bottom level is regular reserve seats, but the upper level is the so-called green car, first class, and that’s what I want. Hopefully, a window seat on the left where the sunlight and glare should be a little better. Okay, the big moment. I like to try to do this in Japanese as a challenge. Um, this isn’t really anything I was expecting. Okay, English. These lal trains are all weekend only sightseeing trains, which never heard of before. This maybe an idea for a future trip. Okay, limited express reserve seat for Takamatsu. Okay, there’s all the marine liners. Green circles mean plenty of seats available. Not applicable, I think, means smoking preference, but they’re all non-smoking now. Okay, 1213 green car. Always select from seat map. Five cars, only one green option. Um, how does this work? Are these green seats or all reserve seats on both levels? I don’t know. Previous screen. Okay. I guess the top and bottom rows mean the two levels in the car. Okay. I want the upper level and the left side. One way 2,920 yen. Holding a camera, trying to put the bill in flat. Feeling like people behind me are annoyed with how long I’m taking. Please don’t forget your change and ticket. Take your pills. Please take your pills. Okay. Car one, seat 3C. The whole ride is only 52 minutes. Need to pick up something quick for lunch on the train. [Music] Okay, all set. 10 minutes until the train leaves. [Music] All right, there it is. 1213 Marine Liner track 8. Here it is, the front of the Marine Liner. An especially cool design. Any train crossing the Great Sto Bridge will go between JR West and JR Shakoku, technically separate train companies. My Marine Liner’s front three cars are 5000 series cars owned by JR Shikoku, while the two in the back are 22 23 5000 series cars owned by JR West. All designed to be compatible. They’re still cleaning. These trains are so frequent that this one just runs back and forth all day every day, I guess. Pakamatsu means tall pines. I wonder if that’s what they have there. Let’s take a quick look at the rest of the train. Here’s the non-reserve seats in the other four cars. [Music] [Music] Okay, let’s see this green car. Very nice. Like an airplane. Wait, wait. 3C is an aisle seat. How? I didn’t understand the screen. The screen did not make it clear what level or anything. I’m in an aisle seat and I want this window seat. I’m going to have to beg or plead or ask or request when someone comes by, can I move over here, which will probably cause havoc with the uh system, but we’ll see what happens. The route I’m on is referred to as the Sto Ohashi line, but that’s not actually what it’s called. We’ll actually be using three different train lines today. part of the Uno line, all of the Honchi Bissan line, which includes the actual bridge, and a little part of Shikoku’s vast Yosan line. But people refer to this route as the Sto Ohashi line. JR does, too. It’s an official nickname. They announced it like that on the Shinkansen I took this morning to get to Okyama. A salary man came and sat in my window seat, and he yanked down the shade. Another knife in my heart. This will not do. Well, we left Okyama. For better or worse, this is my view, I guess, for now. I haven’t seen the conductor yet. Hopefully, they’ll come before we get to the water. [Music] Including the end points, there are 22 stations along this route. 10 of them are local only, never visited by any marine liner. Of the remaining 12, only a very few morning or late evening marine liners stop. Most of them are like mine. We stop at only four stations between the end points. [Music] Passengers traveling towards Uno and should transfer to the Uno port line at Chayamachi station. [Music] The conductor just walked through, but he didn’t stop. Maybe I can catch him. The bridge is coming up. Pitos. Wow, the trip is saved. All praise the train guy. I’ve never been so happy to see a blur of green trees flying by outside. We’re coming up on Kojima Station, the last one before the bridge. Kojima is also where the track administration changes from JR West to JR Shikoku. [Music] There is a tray for lunch. I have to eat fast though, so I can pay attention to the water. [Music] After leaving Kojima, you’re on the coast of Honchu. There’s the road above us. And when we leave this tunnel, the road will be overhead and we’ll be over the water the whole way. The Great Sto Bridge was built between 1978 and 1988. It’s 13.1 km or 8.1 mi long. It’s actually made of six separate bridges which hop across a series of five islands between Honchu and Shikoku. On the islands, the bridges are joined with vioaducts. On the train, it all just feels like one long bridge with occasional land underneath. The road overhead is four lanes and the train is double tracked the whole way. The six bridges are not all the same type. This first one is the Shimotui Setto Bridge, a suspension bridge with a 940 m central span. The height over the water varies by section, but the train is always a few dozen m between 100 and 200 ft above the water below. We’re over the water now, as we will be for a while. And we’re coming up on a spot where something happened a few months ago from this video, which the more you learn about it, the more annoyed you get. I just I just learned about it yesterday, and learning the details of it made me upset. Right up here. In November 2024, at 7:30 in the morning, a marine liner was going south, approaching Hitsuishi Island, just like I am. Suddenly, there were sparks and smoke around car number three, and both the driver and the conductor pulled the emergency stop button. An electrified wire overhead had overheated and snapped and damaged the panagramraphs on car number three. The train had no power, and everyone was stranded, suspended over the water, and crowded into the cars on either end away from the damage. It took JR two hours to decide what to do. Rather than send buses to the road overhead to rescue the passengers, they decided to send another train from Kojima south on the other usually northbound track. It took a further 3 hours to do that, though. They couldn’t find the collapsible metal gang way that would let passengers walk from one train to the other. It was being stored somewhere at Kojima station, but at some point had been moved, and the official manual wasn’t updated, so nobody knew where it was. So they had to transport another one from Sakayid station down on Shikoku on the road bridge across the sea at one point passing above the stricken train to Kojima station and then the train left. That train arrived at the site 10 minutes later. The passengers had been waiting over 5 hours and they all finally walked across the unnerving metal gangway into the new train and were taken back to safety. Later they found the missing gangway at Kojima station. It was being stored under the platform. The reason for the electrical wire snapping was due to overheating, but the reason for that was never determined. It had been inspected 4 days earlier with no problem found. And in fact, another train had just passed by the spot 10 minutes earlier. But let’s not think about all that as we hopefully pass peacefully by the spot and across the vioaduct on Hitsuishi Island. [Music] Hitsuishi Island has a population of 236 people, a significant drop from the past. Its elementary schools all closed a few years ago. The roadway on the Great Sto Bridge bridge has an exit with a gate that locals can open with a special key card, but others have to visit by bus. There’s no local train station here. In fact, there are no train stations at all between Honchu and Shikoku. We’re actually technically on a vioaduct now over 1 kilometer long between bridges. [Music] The next two bridges are identical twins. Hitsuishima and Iwauroima bridges are cable stayed, not suspension bridges. Each is 792 m long with a central span of 420 m. They meet at Iguro Island in the middle, population 96, with the same restricted car access. [Music] You don’t feel it on board, unless you’re more sensitive than me, maybe. But we’re climbing a 1% incline here to make room for an international shipping lane further south. The second of those twin bridges ends on the small uninhabited Wasa Island. Then the marine liner passes over the shortest bridge, Yoshima Bridge, to Yoshima Island. Yoshima has been an important island for centuries with ample fishing, but only a few safe ports. The island’s population, never high, has fallen to fewer than 100. The bridge was expected to bring tourism to the island’s economy. But what actually happened was people sold off their land and businesses for the construction of the bridge itself, and the tourism never really materialized. Schools all closed and the few students living here now commute to school on Shikoku. But on Yoshima Island, there are historical sites and rock quaries and even Japan’s second oldest lighthouse. And you’re welcome to visit by bus anyway. But visitors are in fact welcome. In fact, that down there is a rest area for drivers, any drivers. And it’s time for the dramatic final act of the Great Sto Bridge. Its two longest bridges, which you can consider one super bridge if you want, since they share a common anchorage, that giant block of concrete in the middle. That teeny piece of rock jutting out of the water is in fact Mitsugu Island. Barely an island and very uninhabited. I hope it can support all this. The first bridge is the Kita or North Bisan Setto bridge with a central span of nearly 1 kilometer and the Minami or South Bison Sto Bridge bridge whose central span is 1.1 km, the longest bridge of the whole thing. We’re at the highest point now. Below is an international shipping channel big enough for humongous container ships flying various countries flags to pass through. Here’s that concrete anchorage from the train. That down there is a museum about this bridge. By the way, we’re finally on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, but it feels like a continent after gazing out from the island hopping trains suspended over the water for so long. And when I say for so long, I mean the Marine Liner was only over the water for about 7 minutes. And that’s the point really. A mere 7 minutes from Honchu to here. Before these bridges were built in the 1980s and ’90s, the only way to get to and from Shikoku was fairies. When a ferry sank in rough, misty waters one morning in 1955, killing dozens of school children, public outrage demanded something safer. Three bridges, safer and also much faster, were constructed across the Setto Inland Sea. Mine is the only one that has railroad tracks on it. In fact, it was built to accommodate a Shinkansen line if and when one is built here, in case 7 minutes is too long for you. The tracks split here to go in both directions around the edge of Shikoku. Basically, mine is going east towards Takamatsu and we’re on the Yosan line now. There’s still about 15 minutes to go. When I rode a series of local trains around the perimeter of Shikoku a couple months ago, I did notice that the north coast here was a sprawling industrial expanse, but I didn’t see it up close like this. It’s captivating in a kind of dingy apocalyptic way up close. [Music] The mountains look fantastic when you can catch a glimpse of them behind the brutal infrastructure. I believe. There are only two stops for the Marine Liner on Shikoku. Here, Sakaid and the final station. This Sakaya is where the emergency collapsible gangway was that somehow took 3 hours to be driven back across the bridge to rescue those people last November. Maybe they didn’t drive it. Maybe they took a scenic ferry. The two directions of the track split off here at the Coto River to go around opposite sides of a JR railard. That second train, the red one behind the closest train, is a Sunrise Setto. One of only two regular overnight trains in Japan. Can’t wait to ride that someday. Okay, there’s our other track. They’re making announcements. We’re arriving in Takamatsu. So, where are all the tall pine trees? [Music] [Music] Takamatsu station is unusual because all trains approach from this direction. There’s no through tracks continuing east. Trains going east have to pull out to the west along these tracks and curl around. So it goes with a station so close to the coast. All right, we’re here in Takamatsu. And here’s my train. It’s going back to Okyama. Lots of trains going on here. It’s a noisy station here at Takamatsu. Actually, that one right there is a marine liner going to Okayyama. There are a lot of these. A lot of these leaving. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on this ride with me. If you ever get a chance, I would say ride this. I would say if you can get a window seat. I would say if you can get a window seat that’s a little bit more on the uh well, if you’re doing the afternoon, a little more more on the north and the uh east side so the glare is not right in your face. And also don’t do it at lunchtime because there’s not really time to eat on the train. I did, but you know, it would be better if you could just not worry about food and just look out the window. Anyway, thank you very much for watching and uh riding along with me and I’ll see you next time. Watch extended videos, exclusive travel logs, video diaries, and other stuff. And help this channel exist by joining my community at patreon.com/t1d. Special thanks this week. Well, first of all, super special thanks to the gruff but lovable train guy who really made most of this footage possible. And special thanks in random order to Russell Davis, Thomas G. Richie, Lever Wong, Matt Kaine, Ray Nichols, Lars Steenberg, Calvin Ferrer, David Richley, Will Phillips, Darcio Toronto, Michael Fedor, and Samantha. Thanks for riding the JR Marine Liner with me. Everywhere is worth exploring.

My ride from Okayama to Takamatsu on the Marine Liner, across the Great Seto Bridge, the world’s longest two-tier road-and-rail bridge.

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My name is Jeremy. I make videos about traveling and discovering obscure places. Everywhere is worth exploring when you wander the world out of curiosity. If you enjoy the work I put into my videos, please consider joining my travel community and signing up for my free weekly newsletter at https://patreon.com/t1dwanderer