The is a rural, regional

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a p ...

line of

Central Japan Railway Company is the main railway company operating in the Chūbu (Nagoya) region of central Japan. It is officially abbreviated in English as JR Central and in Japanese as JR Tōkai ( ja, JR東海, links=no). ''Tōkai'' is a reference to the geographical ...

(JR Central) in

Mie Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Mie Prefecture has a population of 1,781,948 () and has a geographic area of . Mie Prefecture is bordered by Gifu Prefecture to the north, Shiga Prefecture and Kyoto Prefectur ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, connecting

Matsusaka is a city located in Mie Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 157,235 in 66,018 households and a population density of 250 persons per km². The total area of the city is . The city is famous for Matsusaka beef. Geography ...

station in

and Ise-Okitsu station in Tsu. The line takes its name from the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

characters of the cities of and . Although this line was planned to connect them, the section from Ise-Okitsu to Nabari was never built, due to the prior completion of the present Kintetsu

Osaka Line is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 ...

History

The section between Matsusaka and Ieki opened in stages between 1929 and 1931, and was extended to Ise-Okitsu in 1935. Freight services ceased in 1965.

Former connecting lines

* Ise-Kawaguchi station - The Dainippon Railway Co. operated a gauge line to Hisai on the

Kintetsu Nagoya Line ''Kintetsu'' is the abbreviation of , or Kintetsu Railway, a Japanese railway corporation. It may also refer to: Companies * Kintetsu Group Holdings, the holding corporation of the Kintetsu Railway ** Kintetsu Bus, a bus company and a subsidiary ...

between 1925 and 1943.

Service disruptions

Damage from

Typhoon Vera Typhoon Vera, also known as the , was an exceptionally intense tropical cyclone that struck Japan in September 1959, becoming the strongest and deadliest typhoon on record to make landfall on the country as a Category 5 equivalent storm. Th ...

closed the line between Ise-Takehara and Ise-Okitsu for two months in 1959. The entire line was closed for nine months in 1982–83 due to damage caused by Typhoon Bess. In October 2009,

Typhoon Melor Typhoon Melor, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Nona, was a powerful tropical cyclone that struck the Philippines in December 2015. The twenty-seventh named storm and the eighteenth typhoon of the annual typhoon season, Melor killed 51 peopl ...

struck the area, resulting in over 40 washouts on the section between Ieki and Ise-Okitsu, and the section remained closed for six years after. A rail replacement bus served the section during its closure. The section reopened in March 2016. During the summer in 2016, some of the

KiHa 11 The is a single-car diesel multiple unit (DMU) train type operated by Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) and Tokai Transport Service Company (TKJ) on driver-only operated rural services in central Japan. A total of 43 cars were built ...

units, used on the line were unavailable due to inspections so KiHa 25 series DMUs were deployed to temporarily replace them, until they returned to service.

Basic data

*Operators, distances: **

(Services and tracks) ***Matsusaka — Ise-Okitsu: 43.5 km (27.0 mi) *Stations: 15 *Track: Entire line single-tracked *Electrification: None *

Railway signalling Railway signalling (), also called railroad signaling (), is a system used to control the movement of railway traffic. Trains move on fixed rails, making them uniquely susceptible to collision. This susceptibility is exacerbated by the enormo ...

: **Matsusaka — Ieki: Card signalling **Ieki — Ise-Okitsu: Staff signalling

Service

The Meishō Line is a rural line in the inland of Mie Prefecture. There are eight return workings daily. All trains are Local driver-only services. All trains stop at every station. There are no limited-stop services such as rapids. Services are nearly always formed of single-car

series DMUs. Very occasionally, two cars may be used during events or busy seasons.

Stations

All stations are located in

References

Lines of Central Japan Railway Company Rail transport in Mie Prefecture 1067 mm gauge railways in Japan {{Japan-rail-line-stub