Railway History Park in Saijo

The park stands beside Iyo-Saijo station and is made up of four buildings: two halls of the Shikoku Railway Museum, a memorial hall, and a tourist centre.

The north hall is a large timber building holding two vehicles.

One is a car of the first series of Shinkansen, the type that ran when the line opened in 1964. The other is the first of the DF50 class of diesel locomotives, which worked mainly in Shikoku and is registered as a quasi railway memorial. It is the only DF50 in the country kept in running order, and a track branching off the JR Shikoku line next door runs into the hall, so it can be moved under its own power.

The memorial hall is for Sogo Shinji, an honorary citizen of Saijo. He was the town's second mayor, and then the fourth president of Japanese National Railways.

In that post he pushed through the building of the Tokaido Shinkansen, a project of a kind nobody had attempted anywhere, and he is remembered as the father of the bullet train. The hall covers that work and also the man himself, who was known for his temper.

The pairing is the point of the park: the Shinkansen car in one building, and in another the man from this town who made the line possible.