Aha - your no. 3 is at Kagoshimachuoekimae Station, showing a Kagoshima City Tram - which surprisingly enough is in Kagoshima City (Kyushu Island, Japan).
Absolutely correct - well spotted! (Or googled). The Dawlish-esque railway line is also in Kagoshima, on the approach to the main station from the greater part of Japan, so I will draw this to a close. Kyushu Island is the most south-westerly of the four main islands of Japan, and Kagoshima city is at the southernmost tip.
The reason I posted the picture of that stretch was not just to divert my attention for a moment from the magnificent Sengan-en gardens behind me, but to ponder the nature of coastal railways across the world. The area is seismically very active, with regular earthquakes. The weather includes frequent typhoons, and to put the icing on the cake, there is an active volcano a couple of miles away. Despite all this, the Japanese not only run a railway there, but have electrified it. What are they doing right that we could learn from for Dawlish, I wonder?
The other photos were just to make this a bit of fun as well. The Penang funicular railway was built in the days when we British ruled Malaysia. It's very hot there, and according to Noel Coward:
"In the Malay States there are hats like plates, which the Britishers won't wear"
so we built a railway to take the expats to the cooler hilltops.
The Kagoshima tram is a thing of beauty, and an example of how to do public transport with style. The vehicles themselves are reminiscent of the old Blackpool trams I went to school on in terms of technology - that is to say, somewhat rudimentary. They are smaller and have seats along the sides with plenty of straps for standing passengers. One boards at the door in the centre. When the tram arrives at the stop, the driver stands and turns to face the passengers, who disembark via the front door. As they do so, they either swipe or show a pass, or drop the exact fare (¥170, or about £1.25) into a machine. The driver bows and says "Arigatou gozaimashita" (a very polite form of "Thank you", in the past tense because the service rendered is now complete) to each departing passenger. The vehicles are spotless, probably cleaned by the driver himself. Not that this would be much of a burden, as litter, graffiti, and the other curses of modern day western countries are absent everywhere.
Tram bowling sounds fun! Perhaps the Belgians could lobby for it to be made a demonstration sport at the forthcoming Olympics?
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