A small railway business in Shizuoka Prefecture is looking for an entity or an individual interested in buying a retired, non-working electric locomotive as a display piece.
The 11-meter-long, 40-ton ED403 locomotive was built in 1966 by Nippon Sharyo Ltd., and despite the size of the purchase, companies and individuals are showing interest, according to Gakunan Electric Train.
The offer may spark interest, but one of the conditions of the sale may prove an obstacle — the buyer must pay for delivery of the engine, which will cost several million yen. On the upside, the price of the locomotive is negotiable.
"We would like to sell it to someone who will cherish it," said a Gakunan Electric official.
The company acquired the ED403 from Alpico Group in Nagano Prefecture in 1971 and had been using it to move materials to and from a paper mill until freight operations ended in March 2012. It was decommissioned in 2015 as it was difficult to modify for other purposes, it said.
At one point, Gakunan Electric explored the possibility of taking the locomotive apart and selling it as scrap, but refrained as it wanted sell it as it had spent its working life.