The beauty of Lake Biwa Canal captured with VR

How to enjoy the contents at the local viewpoint

1. Drum Plant View Point

The blue section of the photo indicates the View Point

2. Display Content

Hold your smartphone or tablet in front of you and tap on the “Experience VR Content” button. The 360-degree VR Content will appear on screen.
Superimpose the scene displayed on the screen onto the actual scene in front of you.
If the angle is slightly off, you can drag the picture with your finger to adjust the angle.

If you tip your smartphone or tablet, the content will display the same direction.

You can move the angle with your finger.

3. Play Content, Return to Previous Screen

Tap the Play button in the center of the screen and the content’s video will play.
To return to the previous screen, tap the BACK button at the top left of the screen.

How the scene has changed between the Incline’s heyday and the present day

Drum Plant

The current interior of the Drum Plant was renovated in 1937, and it still looks almost exactly as it did as when it was operating.
On the left side of the VR screen, the view of the Incline from the operator’s perspective back in those days has been recreated.

Drum Plant at Keage Berth in 1893, before its relocation

Drum Plant after its relocation to Nanzenji Berth
*Photographs from personal collection

Learn more about the Drum Plant!

The Drum Plant was a facility used to operate the Incline. A winch, or drum hoist, about 3.6 m in diameter was used to wind up an about 8.9-cm thick wire cable, which moved the cradles, with the boats loaded onto them, up and down the Incline.
The electric motor used to power the drum hoist had a direct-current voltage of 440 volts and an electric current of 70 Amperes. It had two winding speeds—2.5 feet (approx. 76 cm) per second and 5 feet (approx. 152 cm) per second. A one-way trip between Keage Berth and Nanzenji Berth took about 15 minutes.
The Drum Plant was a 120 m2 one-story brick building. It was originally located beside the Keage Berth, but was later moved to its current location north of the Nanzenji Berth at the bottom of the Incline. After suffering damage in the Muroto Typhoon of 1934, the building and machinery were renovated in 1937. Those renovations are what remain today.

How the Incline Worked

The Keage Incline was a double-track inclined railway system.
When it was first built, the original plan was for a waterwheel to power a drum hoist that would pull the cradles up and down with wire cable. However, with the completion of the Keage Electric Power Station, the design was changed to allow for the use of electric power.
The system used to pull the cradles vertically operated on the same principles as the cable car. As shown in the diagram, a drum hoist with a diameter of 3.6 m was rotated with a 35-horsepower (25 kW) direct-current electric motor to wind up an approximately 3-cm thick wire cable.
A pulley with a diameter of 3.2 m was placed in a horizontal position under the water at the Keage Berth. In those days, rails were imported from Great Britain. Cable-bearing pulleys, about 60 cm in diameter, were placed between the rails at approximately 9-meter intervals to prevent the wire cables from rubbing against the ground, thus allowing for smooth hoisting.
The hoist had two speeds—2.5 feet (approx. 76 cm) per second and 5 feet (approx. 152 cm) per second. A one-way trip took between 10 and 15 minutes.

Canal Tidbit: How was the movement of the cradles timed?

Vol. 15, No. 6 (June 1932) of the children’s magazine, Kodomo no Kagaku [Science for Children], contains an article about the Keage Incline that illustrates well how the Incline was operated at the time.
The magazine states, ‘The operator starts the motor as soon as he receives the signal through the window that the boat has been placed on the cradle. ...Because the two trucks must always be in the correct position, if the drum’s rotation is stopped and the brake is applied when one of the trucks (the one in the lower canal) is in the underwater position, the other cradle in the upper canal, which is not visible from the Drum Plant, will also be positioned correctly in the water.’
In other words, once the boat was loaded onto the cradle at the bottom of the Incline, the boatman would give a signal, and the drum hoist operator, on receiving that signal, would start the motor. To stop the system, when the cradle coming toward the Drum Plant was properly under water, he would apply the brake. In this way, the cradle at the top of the Incline, which was not visible from the Plant, would stop in exactly the right place.