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Altough not really well-known, this very small series of just two trains fetaures a huge number of quirky fetaures and interesting things, above all, the company owning them: “the Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation”. This isn’t of course any normal railway company – the HUDC was a Japanese government-owned pubblic corporation (de-facto operating as a government bureau) tasked with designing, building and managing new pubblicly-owned residential developments and correlated necessary pubblic services.
So, how did what was essentially a pubblic housing authority end up with it’s own train fleet? The answer lies in the intricated mess that is the Hokuso Line, and, more broadly, the Keisei group.
It all started in the 1960s, at the height of Japan’s economic miracle. With mass immigration from the countryside to major metropolitan areas, a huge strain was put on the already precarious housing system of most major cities: there simply weren’t enough houses to accomodate all those that were moving into the city, and the existing stock was inadequate as well, mostly still formed of relatively cramped Machiya-type traditional houses, with tiled roofs and wood framing. To prevent an all-too-probable rise of uncontrollable and messy urban expansion, the Japanese government began building the so-called “New Towns”, precisely and neatly planned large-scale housing developments, formed almost exclusively of the “Danchi”-type apartment blocks, inspired by soviet practice, comprehensive of most pubblic services and rivalling (and often surpassing) in size nearby historic towns. As the focal point of these “New Towns” was to serve people that were to work in the city, the connection with the city itself was of utmost importance, meaning that New Towns had to be inevitably built along railway lines. In Tokyo, this was applied rigorously, with the largest New Town ever built, Tama New Town, being placed explicitly along Keio’s Sagamihara and Main Line.
However, some issues soon became apparent, in the form of the land’s natural geography: Tokyo’s western side was already railway-wise extremely well-developed, but the same area is also rather hilly, limiting chances to expand without undergoing expensive and time-consuming land adjustment works (basically flattening hills and mountains – actual environmental concerns would come only in a decade or so). With no end in sight to the urban population boom, and with no more room to place new developments in western Tokyo, an alternative had to be found.
This alternative came on the other side of Tokyo, all the way in Chiba prefecture: unlike it’s southern counterpart, with a coastline littered with industries, the northern portion of Chiba prefecture always was relatively underdeveloped and almost entirely rural. In 1966, as the definitive location of Tokyo’s new airport, Narita, was choosen to be in northern Chiba, the prefectural government, very likely not coincidentally, announced a plan to build a “New Town” capable of accomodating 340’000 residents in roughly the same area. For the first time, Urban Planners had the closest thing possible to a clean slate: miles and miles of flat, nondeveloped countryside to build on. Construction of “Chiba New Town” began in 1970, but remained rather sluggish, in part as well probably due to the heightened scrutiny over the new airport itself, wich most chiba residents vehemently protested against. Finally, in 1978, the project’s status was considerably expedited, being elevated from prefectural to a national one, as the Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation (then still known as the “Japan Housing Corporation”) became involved at the request of the prefectural government itself.
A forecast of 340’000 residents is a hefty number; the only system capable of moving such an amount of people in a cost-effective and efficient way is of course a commuter railway. One small issue: the area where Chiba New Town was located had none – JNR’s Narita Line was too far north, Keisei’s Main Line was too far south. The solution was simple: build one from scratch. The new line, and by extension the new town itself were to be built on a east-west alignment, roughly following the shortest route between the new Narita Airport and Tokyo’s city center (paralleling the proposed, and ill-fated “Narita Shinkansen”) with plans calling for it to be integrated, or atleast connected and provided with trough-services with either Line No.1 (the Asakusa Line, wich eventually prevailed) or Line No.10 (the current Shinjuku Line, whose construction had just begun), both of wich were Toei subway lines, owned and managed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, wich had a considerable stake of interest in the Chiba Newtown project. The project for the line, as per modern praxis, was divided in phases, to be built eastwards in sequence: the first phase was to connect the Komuro area of Chiba Newtown to the Shin-Keisei Line at Kita-Hatsutomi, the closest “existing” railway line, where the trains of the new town line were to continue onwards onto the Shin-Keisei Line up until Matsudo station as a provisional mesaure until a more direct link to central Tokyo could be built. The second phase consisted in an eastwards extension, entering into Chiba Newtown “proper”, serving Chiba-Newtown-Chuo (“Chiba New Town Central”), Inzai Makinohara and Imba-Nihon-Idai (“Imba Medical University”) stations. The third phase was to properly connect the line to central Tokyo, abandoning the trough-services with Shin-Keisei and building a westwards extension of the line up until Keisei-Takasago, establishing a connection with the Keisei network and thus trough-services to central Tokyo via the Keisei Main Line and Toei Asakusa Line.
The first phase of Chiba New Town’s railway opened on the 9th of March 1979 as the “Hokuso Line” (“Hokuso” being an alternative kanji reading of “North Chiba”), running 7,9Km between Kita-Hatsutomi and Komuro stations with trough-services with the Shin-Keisei Line, as planned. The Hokuso Line and it’s trains were (and are) owned and operated by the Hokuso Railway, a company founded and owned jointly by Keisei Railway and the Prefectural Government of Chiba, with a small portion of the shares being in the hands of Matsudo city as well. As the first phase of the line was completed, and construction began on the second, demand for housing rose sharply (signing the beginning of Japan’s euphoric, and ultimately fatal, asset bubble), with the Japan Housing Corporation choosing to involve itself even deeper in the project, unusually taking upon itself the task of building and managing not only the housing and service-related part of Chiba New Town, but the remaining phases of the railway as well!
Thus, after passing some necessary administrative and bureaucratic steps (and coinciding with it’s restructuration from the “Japan Housing Corporation” to the “Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation, reflecting the agency’s widened scope), Japan’s pubblic housing corporation became a full-fledged railway company as well. HUDC’s first railway line, the first portion of the second phase of Chiba New Town’s railway, the four Kilometers between Komuro and Chiba-Newtown-Chuo stations, finally opened for regular services on the 19th of March 1984 as the “Kodan” Line (“Kodan” being Japanese for “Pubblic Corporation”).
Being HUDC’s first railway line, the pubblic corporation had readied a small fleet of trains to operate it: it’s own “2000 Series”, just two six-car sets.
The new trains had been designed thruought 1982, with the order being placed to Nippon Sharyo in April 1983, wich built them between November and December of the same year. Sinc ethe “Kodan” and “Hokuso” lines were always intended to be operated jointly, HUDC’s 2000 Series was entirely based on Hokuso Railway’s distinctive 7000 Series, wich had been introduced in 1979 with the opening of the Hokuso Line (and had also been manufactured by Nippon Sharyo). As such, the two trains were technically identical, sharing the same traction motors, shunt-chopper control (similar to the ones in use on Keio’s 6000 Series and Tokyu’s 8500 Series trains), bogies, bodyshell construction system and driving cabs (as a result of wich, retained the same two-handle arrangment with a vertical-axis controller and the iconic removable wood and brass brake handle, typical of the 1960s and 1970s). Air conditioning was also fitted from the start, with units on set No.1 having been provided by Toshiba, and the ones on set No.2 having been manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric.
However, from an external point of view, the two trains were nothing alike: the unique segmented front of the 7000 Series (allegedly based on the quintessentially french Néz-Cassé locomotives) was changed in favour of a less complex, less distinctive but still very much pleasant convex front and the mainly blue livery of Hokuso Railway’s (only) trains was changed into an interesting mix of red, light (almost lime) green and dark gray, with the addition of HUDC’s brand-new light blue logos on the front and sides, giving these trains a distinctive appearance.
After the entry into service, things went rather smooth for the trains themselves, running between Chiba-Newtown-Chuo and Matsudo along the Kodan, Hokuso and Shin-Keisei Line, along with their (just slightly) older 7000 Series siblings; however, things weren’t looking particularily great for Chiba New Town itself: as the rural-to-urban immigration finally started to relent after two decades, the grandous “340’000 residents” forecast quickly became more and more irrealistical, in early 1986 the plans for Chiba New Town were modified and shrunk to a forecast of 176’000 residents, just a little more than half the original estimate.
HUDC was a railway company by all means, but had no personnel of it’s own: trains were driven and tracks were maintained by Hokuso Railway employees – HUDC being essentially just the owner of the two 2000 Series trains and of (part of) the tracks on wich they ran. This was further streamlined in 1986, with some admnistrative changes, the two “lines” were officially merged togheter (having been separate only on paper) as the “Hokuso-Kodan Line”.
March 1991 saw the second biggest change in the line(s)’ operational history, as the 12,7Km section between Kita-Hatsuomi and Keisei-Takasago was finally opened, allowing for the commencment of trough-services between the Hokuso-Kodan Line, the Keisei Line, the Toei Asakusa Line and Keikyu Railway’s Main Line, enabling direct services between Chiba Newtown and Tokyo’s city center. Coinciding with the commencment of trough-services, the 2000 Series was re-classified as the “9000 Series” (to avoid a numbering conflict with Keikyu’s own 2000 Series) and, togheter with Hokuso Railway’s 7000 Series, extended from six to eight cars by adding two newly-built intermediate cars. For trough-services, the cab cars of the newly re-classified 9000 Series were also retrofitted with a powered front bogie, a requirement of Keikyu Railway. Soon after, in July 1992, the provisional trough-services with the Shin-Keisei Railway were curtailed as planned.
1995 saw a further eastwards extension of the Hokuso-Kodan Line, 4,7Km to Inzai-Makinohara still part of “Phase 2” and thus built and owned by HUDC, but operated by Hokuso Railway. Coinciding with the opening of this new section, new trains were introduced in service – the funky uniquely-looking 9100 Series, and in 2000, “Phase 2” was finally completed, with the opening of Inba-Nihon-Idai station, the current easternmost terminus for almost all Hokuso Line trains (the line beyond Inba-Nihon-Idai, the Narita Sky Access Line to Narita Airport opened in 2010, but as of today is only served by a select number of express services to and from the airport. Almost all commuter trans terminate atInba-Nihon-Idai).
As the 1990s came to an end, the need for new housing shrunk as the asset price bubble had burst and was wreaking havoc in the Japanese economy, it was now apparent that such extremely large-scale “New Town” developments were no longer economically feasable, or even needed at all. Within a few years all major governmental housing plans being put on hold, including Chiba New Town, in wichever state they were at the moment – often actually rather far from completion. In 1999, the Housing and Urban Development Pubblic Corporation was extensively reformed, morphing into the “Urban Development Pubblic Corporation”, reflecting the dwindling importance pubblic housing projects had. The new UDC however still inherited and maintained all the assets of the HUDC, including the rolling stock: three 9100 Series trains and our two 9000 Series sets, wich were fitted with UDC’s new purple and dark blue logos in place of the HUDC’s older ones.
The UDC however was always intended to be a sort of a “temporary entity”, useful to take some time to evaluate wich one was to be the path that the agency should be following in the future. As the Japanese economy started to stagnate in the post-bubble era, the answer came in 2004: the once rather powerful former HUDC was considerably downsized and restructured into the “Urban Renaissance” agency, yet again reflecting it’s changed scope: from now on, the new UR was just to manage the areas built by it’s predecessors, focusing on redevelopment and regeneration of existing buildings; large-scale developments and “New Towns” were to be a thing of the past, glorious, but gone. As part of the reformation and downsizing, UR sought to sell off or hand over all unnecessary, superfluous or, simply, “unusual” assets acquired by it’s predecessors, with the “railway area” being a perfect candidate. As such, in 2004, all of HUDC’s owned rolling stock and trackage was spun off and trasnferred to an ad-hoc created company, Chiba Newtown Railway, wich began operations on the 16th of March of the same year. Chiba Newtown Railway as a company is even more “barebones” that HUDC (or it’s pro-tempore successor UDC) was: it has no personnel of it’s own, not even administrative, and basically exists only to provide a legal “owner” for the inherited HUDC rolling stock and trackage, wich is then leased to Hokuso Railway. In fact, for all operations and purposes, Hokuso considers Chiba Newtown’s rolling stock as it own; after all, it operates, maintains and manages it in almost evry aspect – Chiba Newtown Railway’s rolling stock is Hokuso’s in all but name only.
In the same year, reflecting the various changes, the “Kodan” moniker of the old HUDC was dropped from the line’s name, wich now returned to be just the “Hokuso Line”.
Depsite all the various administrative and company-related shenanigans, the operational life of the two 9000 Series sets remained quite tranquil and regular, with very little changes to timetables and operations since 1991, when trough-services had begun. However, over the years age caught up with these trains, and a replacement began to be sought for. Out of the two sets, No.1 was the first to be retired, being replaced in 2013 by a single “9200 Series” set, purchased by Chiba Newtown Railway and essentially identical to Keisei’s 3000 Series (derivatives of wich were being introduced by the other Keisei group companies as well: Hokuso Railway, with it’s 7500 Series and Shin-Keisei Railway with it’s N800 Series). Set No.2 instead lived on for four years longer, being retired from regular services on the 17th of March of 2017, being replaced by a single “9800 Series” set, this time an ex-3700 Series set leased from Keisei indefinitely. After a special, reservation-by-lottery-only, final run on the 20th of March, set No.2 was retired definitely as well, after thirty-three years of service.
Unfortunately all cars were scrapped immediately after retirement, with none surviving into preservation.
Trivia #1:
The “2000 Series” designation was officially choosen to symbolize “the path of Chiba New Town towards the year 2000”.
The actual reason was, however, far more practical in nature: avoiding confusion with Toei, Shin-Keisei and especially other Keisei rolling stock; this however became moot with the start of trough-services with Keikyu Railway, with HUDC’s trains needing to be re-classified into the unused “9000 Series” designation, as the “2000 Series” name had just become in conflict with Keikyu’s own 2000 Series.
Trivia #2:
During the “2000 Series” era, the numbering system for the cars was essentially identical to TRTA’s one. With the reclassification into the “9000 Series”, this system was changed as well, in favour of a one more similar to Keikyu and Keisei’s practices.
Trivia #3:
The red, green and grey (over silver stainless steel) color scheme of these trains were chosen so as to symbolize “the youth of the new town, and the tranquility of life in it”.
This unusual combination also led to a slightly less edifying nickname among railfans: “Tomato Salad”.
Trivia #4:
Chiba Newtown Railway is a fully-owned subsidiary of Keisei Railway, and it leases tracks and rolling stock to Hokuso Railway, wich is 50% owned by Keisei Railway.
In other words, Keisei Railway is paying part of the leasing costs to itself.
Trivia #5:
Out of the various small “heritages” of the HUDC era, one of the most interesting ones is the fact that, depsite having shed any direct participation in transport operations for near two decades, the successor to the HUDC, the Urban Renaissance Agency still owns 17,27% of Hokuso Railway’s shares.
Trivia #6:
The actual population of Chiba New Town ended up being only about 100’000 residents (105’908 as of today), less than a third of what was originally forecast in the 1970s.