AstroBoy Online Forums

If you have seen the episode "Speeding Through the Storm" of the 1980s Astro Boy (if you haven't you REALLY should) you'll remember that the girl's grandpa is the robot computer of a steam locomotive titled the 'D51'.

If you haven't known already, the D51 actually did exist. 1,115 D51s have been built in Japan for the Japanese National Railways between 1936-1951 and were nicknamed "degoichi" trains by the public. They played a role in World War II, and many of them have been preserved today.

D51 498 is the sole running locomotive remaining.
http://www.shinano-machi.com/information/images/D51-1.JPG

And you can see the resemblance in the AstroBoy episode here:
Number 1

And here:
Number 2

Please note that "D51 N29" (probably) didn't exist, as the numbers didn't contain letters except for the "D" in the beginning.

Still, its interesting that Tezuka decided to use this train for the episode.

Why must you post such large images, seeing that 640 x 480 was the original size? Please resize them, as some of us hate horizontal scroll bars!

or just link to large images.

in fact could you link to them I want to see.

Great idea, done .

Thanks, Androids for sharing the photos of the D51 and info about that episode. I haven't seen many of the 1980's anime, but have recently been watching more and more -- this was a really enjoyable story, and even better knowing they were featuring an authentic Japanese steam engine.

I think I have seen a few other references to D51 in other anime, but need to search my HDD to find them.

This is very interesting, I had no idea.

The photos of the D51 seem to be gone, but I found another link.
It appears that there are several of this class in a museum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JNR_Class_D51

Some interesting info here. Funny thing is, I actually watched the episode "Speeding Through the Storm" this morning, then saw this when I got online.