Emmaru Railways Co. Ltd. (ja: 株式会社円丸鉄道, Kabushiki gaisha Enmaru Tetsudō), also known as Entetsu (ja: 円鉄, Entetsu), is a private railway company operating mainly in the Japanese-speaking parts of Limaru. Being one of the two main railway companies in Limaru, Emmaru Railways is known for its fast metro services that reach many places around the server.
Network
Emmaru Railways is a firm believer in a mesh network, and that can be seen in its network in which there is a lack of a hub station. Instead, most of the network comprises of lines that connect nearby towns to one another and to places of interest on the other side of town, without passing through the city centre to avoid crowds. Track sharing is generally avoided to increase the frequency of lines, but it is used when there are more than one place of interest in a single direction.
Emmaru Railways is also the first company in Limaru to adopt distance fares before the nationwide flat fare system kicked in (now replaced by the Iciwi distance fare system). From 2018 to 2019, it also charged a premium for passengers travelling to Higashiyama.
Emmaru Railways also operates a bus division known as Entetsu Buses, which provides bus services that ply unpopular routes or routes that are not served by trains.
Products
Besides train services, Emmaru Railways also carries out rail maintenance for other railways and sells server plugins and signalling solutions. One prominent success of these ventures is the Emmaru Light Signal, a two-block glow-when-red lamp that displays 2 to 4 aspects depending on the block displayed.
History
Emmaru Railways first started as Washington Railways, opening a passenger rail line between Grand Central (now Emmaru Central) and Enshima End in (year). In the same year, a separate line between Grand Central and Shichijo (Yanagi Bay) opened, mostly serving freight trains carrying goods between the city and the ports. These two lines proved to be profitable enough that Washington Railways extended the Enshima End branch to Takashima station in 1900, hoping to poach more passengers from the swampy rural areas of Enshima. However, this extension would prove to be unpopular, causing WR to cut passenger service back to Enshima End until 1929, with only freight service running through that section.
The next change came in 1914, when Washington Railways were employed as the main railway to transport goods from the north to the ports in Yanagi Bay. This came in the form of a hastily-built temporary railway between downtown Lipan and Grand Central station, where the railway blasted through the old ticket hall to connect to the previously bay platforms. In the same year, the temporary railway was upgraded to a more permanent one as more goods were transported, causing Washington Railways to draw up a timetable that also included passenger services. This would become the predecessor of today's Namboku Line, built using roughly the same alignment.
Rolling Stock
Emmaru Railways predominantly uses rolling stock made by EndeRails from the Shafterlands, although historically it has also purchased railcars from other countries. The average lifespan of a railcar on the Emmaru Railways network is 30 to 50 years, although older cars are usually overhauled and redeployed on less intense railways after their service life ends.
Current fleet
Former fleet
- Class C13/C14 EMU
- Class C23 EMU
- Class C307 EMU