It began, as most trips down YouTube rabbit holes do, with a tantalizing thumbnail in my feed. Some of my non-train-related leisure time these days is spent watching anime with my neighbor Steve, so a video with both a train and a blue-haired anime girl was all the clickbait I needed. YouTube knows what I like. I clicked through, and was treated to an engaging low-poly 3D animation of electrified helper-grade operation through Japan’s Usui Pass. This was unlike any Japanese railroading I had ever heard of. When I hear “Japan,” “mountains,” and “trains,” I think of Mount Fuji as a distant backdrop to a speeding Shinkansen, and…well, that’s about it. But a 6.67% grade? That can’t be right, can it?

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