Umekoji (Kyoto Railway Museum) about 60 years ago and today

History of Umekoji (Kyoto Railway Museum)

The area spreading west of Kyoto Station and south of Shichijo-dori is a flat surface at the bottom of the basin. A town area divided into a grid continues as far as the eye can see, with almost no relief that could be called a slope. When the railway entered Kyoto, the yard of the station alone could not handle all the freight and locomotives. So this flat land about 1 km west of the station was chosen, and a wide rail yard for transferring cargo and a depot for handling steam locomotives were placed here. The place name Umekoji came to be known across the country as the name of the facility itself.

The difference between the five measurement points is only 2.2 m. The highest, the center, is 26.3 m, the lowest, the south, is 24.1 m, and the values for the east and west fall between them. The southern part of the Kyoto Basin is a low, flat surface made of soil carried by the Kamo River and the Katsura River, and this area is part of it. To lay dozens of tracks in parallel and install a round device that turns locomotives around, wide ground without a slope is needed. This is a case where the conditions of the terrain decided the use.

The semicircular depot and the turntable

In the 1945-50 aerial photograph, a bundle of tracks runs diagonally from slightly above the center of the frame to the southwest. Partway along, the bundle opens widely like a fan, and from there it divides in three directions: southwest, east and north. The one line to the north runs vertically through the town area, leaning slightly west. At the center of the fan radial lines gather, and in their middle a round surface can be seen. These are the depot and the turntable. On the east side of the bundle, many long, narrow buildings line up facing the same way, which can be read as transit sheds for handling cargo. The upper half of the frame is town area finely packed with roofs, crossed by several wide, bright streets running east-west. Toward the west, bright checkered fields still remain widely, and you can see that the edge of the town area stops there. In the lower left corner another group of tracks and a large building appear.

By 1961-69, the fields that remained in the west have almost all been replaced by town area. The bundle of tracks is densest in this era: dozens of thin lines fill the lower part of the center, and beyond where they open like a fan they are bundled toward the southwest. Above the center, several white round storage tanks sit together, and just south of them rows of white, long, narrow buildings continue north-south. If you bring your eye close to the base of the fan, you can make out beyond doubt a semicircular building with radial partitions lined up and a round turntable placed at its center. The openings of the depot face south to southwest, and the lines extending from them join the bundle of the fan. The outline of the semicircle does not move. Through all the later eras, only this shape keeps sitting in the same position.

Two photographs in color

From 1974-78 the photographs have color. However, the photograph of this era has strong traces of being pieced together, and the color tone switches in rectangles from area to area. The upper right leans toward pale purple, from the middle downward on the right toward blue-gray, the left toward green-gray, and only the upper center becomes a dark green-brown. Even so, the roadbed of the tracks can be read clearly as reddish-brown bands, so the way the fan opens can be compared with the previous era. The white round storage tanks have increased to four. Toward the left of the frame a white, thin straight band runs north-south, but from its width and its unnatural evenness it can be read as something caused by the photograph itself. On the east side, long beige transit sheds and groups of sidings along them line up.

The 1979-83 photograph has a calm tone leaning from yellowish brown to olive overall, and the boundaries of the joins do not stand out. The storage tanks have increased further in number, and to their east a dark lot and reddish-brown buildings adjoin them. The rows of long, narrow buildings in the center are still there, and the bundle of tracks also keeps its width. The town area fills the whole frame, but bright vacant lots have come to be mixed in here and there inside the blocks. In this era the semicircle at the center of the fan appears as a mass darker than its surroundings, and only the arc of the roof can barely be followed. To its northeast, a large rectangle of uniform bright beige lies widely open. It is a flat surface with neither buildings nor roadbed on it, suggesting that the function of handling cargo had begun to withdraw. In 1961-69 the same place was packed with long, narrow buildings and lines, so if you go back and forth between the two eras the change shows clearly.

The turn to preservation

At the time when steam locomotives were retiring from regular service, this depot was left without being dismantled. With its preservation and opening to the public in 1972, the depot and the turntable shifted their role from facilities in active use to facilities for display. As the function of handling cargo shrank, the wide railway land was also opened up little by little, and in 1995 the eastern area opened as Umekoji Park. In 2012 an aquarium was added in a corner of the park, and in 2016 the area including the depot was arranged as the Kyoto Railway Museum. Then in 2019 a station opened. This is Umekoji-Kyotonishi Station on the San'in Line, and it means the area, which until then could only be reached on foot from Kyoto Station, got its nearest ticket gate. It took nearly half a century for land for carrying cargo to change into land for gathering people.

The semicircle that changed its role

In today's aerial photograph, the semicircular roof remains north of the bundle of tracks. The partitions lined up along the arc and the round turntable at the center are in the same position as in the four past eras. A large pale gray roof is placed adjoining the north of the semicircle, and from there dark green tree crowns and bright surfaces of lawn spread to the east. Within the green space a building with a blue-green curved surface and white rectangles can be seen, and thin surfaces that look like waterside are mixed in. The bundle of tracks has been moved to the south side and runs east-west, being bundled toward the southwest. The bundle is clearly narrower than in 1979-83. On the west side of the semicircle a long building and a few sidings remain, and you can see that not all the railway facilities have disappeared. North of the semicircle, at the position of the boundary with the town area, a single large white rectangular roof sits. The density of the town area rises with each era, and every block is filled with roofs.

Even if you move through the four past photographs in order from the oldest, only the shape at the center of the fan does not change. The change is in what is put into that semicircle and who is made to walk around it. A place where locomotives rested became a place where locomotives are shown. A case of keeping the facilities as they were and replacing only their role is rare among former railway sites.

On the flood hazard map that the City of Kyoto publishes, you can check in a figure which assumption this area falls into if the Katsura River or the Kamo River overflows. If you walk here with the condition of being at the bottom of a basin in mind, it is a map worth looking at first.

The official land price (Chika Koji) can be followed at a residential site in Suzaku Shokai-cho about 178 m away. It has never exceeded 379,000 yen per square meter in 1993, the starting point of the record, up to the 2026 publication. Except for a slight recovery in 2007 and 2008, the direction is downward, and the 213,000 yen that stands from 2012 through 2014 is the bottom up to the 2026 publication. After that it rises year by year, and in the 2026 publication it is 360,000 yen. Even so, it has stopped at a position 19,000 yen below the starting point.