A blast from the past – another part of the incredibly popular Nara Dreamland hardly anybody cared to look for… the trains!
At the height of its popularity in 2016 the abandoned Nara Dreamland was visited by dozens of people every day, from babies carried by their mothers (all of them foreigners, at least the ones I saw…) to groups of Japanese senior citizens – but hardly anybody really explored that amazing location. Most of those thrill-seeking, bored adventure tourists (including those who call themselves urban explorers) came in through the tunnels underneath the train station, walked past the shops of Fake Street USA to the castle, had a look at the rollercoasters and disappeared again – a few put in some extra effort to check out the water park and / or the rides in the back, but most of them left with a selfie in front of a rollercoaster or the castle to cross off another item on their FOMO hipster list. Hundreds, probably thousands of people came to Nara Dreamland in 2015 and 2016, pretty much everybody saw the train station that dominated the entrance and was even visible from outside the park – yet pictures of the Nara Dreamland trains are super rare, despite the fact that one of the iron horses was waiting for the things to come in an open shed pretty much right next to Aska, the stunning wooden rollercoaster. (The other one was parked on the track in an artificial tunnel in the southeast “corner” of the park, overgrown most of the year…) On the other hand it was probably a blessing for those trains that they only had a handful of visitors in total instead of a handful of visitors per day – they were (mostly) spared the serious amount of vandalism that the monorail and other parts of the park had to suffer through; not to mention all of *Western Village* up in Kanto, which went to hell in a handbasket as soon as it became famous, thanks to a nearby train station and some assholes who can’t behave (pardon my French…).
The pictures in the gallery at the end of this article are mostly of the train in the shed, because it was easy to find, easy to access and easy to take photos of, though it was also next to a surprisingly busy side road and you really couldn’t say if the noise from a scooter was coming from outside or from a security guard on the premises (not counting the one year or so without any security at all, of course – during that time it was pretty clear…).
What happened to the Nara Dreamland trains? I have no idea. The last owner of Nara Dreamland blocked any attempts to make contact, so unless one or both of them show up somewhere in the future (three, if you count the monorail), I guess they’ve been sold for scrap – which would be a shame, because according to the builder’s plate on the train in the shed the locomotive was built by Vulcan Foundry in Newton-le-Willows in 1871. I’m not a train expert, so I have no idea how authentic the train and the worksplate were, but at least there was indeed a Vulcan Foundry Company building steam locomotives in Newton-le-Willows, England, at that time… (According to a Youtube comment by user SJ, who googled the engine gauge “1871 #614 2-4-0, 3’6”, this might have been the first train to ever run in Japan – which makes me hope even more that it was donated to a museum and not scrapped, but Nara Dreamland was bought for profit and I don’t think the new owner cared much about anything… Addendum 2019-02-12: According to Youtube user YannickGB the train at Nara Dreamland most likely was a replica as the original is in the Saitama Railway Museum.)
Hindsight is 20/20 and even I wish I would have spent more time documenting the locomotives of Nara Dreamland, but at least I can say that I’ve seen them both and have been on one of them. Unfortunately the general interest in Nara Dreamland died as quickly as it was demolished, but I hope the Abandoned Kansai audience is a little bit more hardcore than the average Instagram hipster out there and appreciates both the photos and the videos of this article. And if you have never seen the Nara Dreamland shrine, you might want to *check out part I of this series*.
(For all your *Nara Dreamland* needs please have a look at the *Nara Dreamland Special*. *Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)
Abandoned Kansai 
I’ve had an interest in the vehicles of Nara Dreamland for a while, so I’ll spill the information I’ve found on them since demolition.
The monorail, pink Cadillac (1973 DeVille with roof cut off), and fire truck were all destroyed. I have photos of the Cadillac literally ripped to pieces (I assume separating the different kinds of metal, fabric, etc).
As for the trains:
Both were replicas running diesel engines. The width of the track was 1067mm. The real locomotives they’re based on have historical significance in Japan.
The small brown one is known as the “Number 1 Locomotive” (or “150” “A1”, it has a few names/numbers). I have read a forum post (google translated) that there was interest from a train club to purchase it, but it ended up scrapped.
The larger train is “Benkei” from the JGR 7100 series. I ASSUME this one was saved, since it was covered in tarps, and moved right by a gate with road access (so a truck could load it up). I’m thinking it will either be put on display somewhere in Japan, or has been sold to another theme park, probably in a poor country (a lot of old theme park attractions end up getting bought and shipped to these places) with the same track width.
I do not know what happened to the carriages. I would assume the pink ones were destroyed if they did indeed destroy the Number 1 Locomotive.
The yellow carriages were still attached to Benkei when it was originally moved to the location pictured, best case scenario they were removed by truck first, or (more likely) uncoupled and dragged off to be smashed up. Although I’ve never noticed scrapes in the concrete from the wheels if they were dragged off, or pieces of yellow wood nearby or in any of the wood piles, so it’s possible they survived.
Thank you very much for sharing all the knowledge! Over the last two years I kinda lost track of Nara Dreamland. AFAIK demolition is finished, but construction hasn’t started yet – that’s it.
Very nice.
Thanks! 🙂
cool 🙂 kinda reminds me one time when we went to check somekind of train cemetery, there was a completely overgrown steam locomotive aswell, with relatively large parts obviously cut off by metal thiefs…i was thinking they had to put so much effort into that, just to get a few bucks lol…but in general it was an interesting place, and rather unusual too as it was barely 1 km from cz capital city’s all touristy centre hahaha
LOL, yeah, sometimes some really cool abandoned things are basically in plain sight! 🙂
Danke für den Artikel! Wusste auch nicht, dass dort noch Züge standen, obwohl ich hier alle Nara Dreamland Artikel verfolgt habe, ebenso auf anderen Seiten. Danke dafür! Zu schade, dass ich selbst niemals in der Lage war, Nara Dreamland zu besuchen.
War mir eine Freude. Und ja, mit dem Artikel über die Züge habe ich mir Zeit gelassen… Einen weiteren unbekannten Teil des Nara Dreamland habe ich noch – und Hunderte Fotos von den letzten Wochen vor dem Abriss und den Abrissvorbereitungen, also beispielsweise von der Leerräumung der Gebäude usw.