The is a railway line of the

Ōigawa Railway is a railway company in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, which first opened in 1927. The company is commonly known as . The company belonged to the Meitetsu Group until 2015, when it was sold to Eclipse Hidaka, a food and hotel company headquarte ...

. It runs from Senzu Station in

Kawanehon, Shizuoka 270px, Kawanehon Town Hall is a town located in Haibara District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 6,731 in 2895 households and a population density of 13.4 persons per km². The total area of the town was ...

, the end station of the

Ōigawa Main Line The is a Japanese railway line which connects Kanaya Station in Shimada, Shizuoka Prefecture with Senzu Station in Kawanehon, Haibara District, Shizuoka Prefecture. It is owned and operated by the private railway operator Ōigawa Railway ...

, and terminates at Ikawa Station in

Aoi-ku, Shizuoka is one of three wards of the city of Shizuoka in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, located in the northern part of the city. Aoi-ku borders Suruga-ku in the south and Shimizu-ku to the southeast; the west faces Shimada, Fujieda and Kawanehon a ...

. The line has 61 tunnels and 51 bridges along its 25.5 kilometer length and includes the only rack-and-pinion railway section currently operating in Japan. In September 2022, the Ōigawa Main Line suffered substantial damage from Tropical Storm Talas. Rail services between Kawane-Onsen Sasamado and Senzu Station were suspended until further notice. Steam locomotives were changed to only operate between Shin-Kanaya and Kawane-Onsen Sasamado. Ōigawa Railway advises customers intending to travel beyond Ieyama Station to the Ikawa Line, towards Senzu and the Sumata Gorge area, to transfer to Kawanehon Town's community buses at Ieyama Station, which provide connections to Senzu Station.

History

The Ikawa line began operations on March 20, 1935, as a private line for the Ōigawa Electric Company, to carry workers and materials upstream to facilitate dam construction. The single track line was originally constructed with

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

; however, in order to have dual usage with carriages on the Senzu-Shinrin Line (now closed) a

third rail A third rail, also known as a live rail, electric rail or conductor rail, is a method of providing electric power to a railway locomotive or train, through a semi-continuous rigid conductor placed alongside or between the rails of a track (r ...

was added the following year for the Japanese standard gauge (). In 1954, the line was extended under the aegis of the

Chubu Electric Power , abbreviated as Chuden in Japanese, is a Japanese electric utilities provider for the middle Chūbu region of the Honshu island of Japan. It provides electricity at 60 Hz, though an area of Nagano Prefecture uses 50 Hz. Chubu Electric ...

Company to facilitate the construction of the Ōigawa Dam. Railway operations were spun out of Chubu Electric into a separate company in 1959, with the foundation of the Ōigawa Railway Company. With the completion of the Nagashima Dam, a portion of the line had to be re-routed along a 1.5 km section with a maximum

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function f of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p gives the direction and the rate of fastest increase. The g ...

of 9% (~1 in 11). This required the installation of an

Abt rack system A rack railway (also rack-and-pinion railway, cog railway, or cogwheel railway) is a steep grade railway with a toothed rack rail, usually between the running rails. The trains are fitted with one or more cog wheels or pinions that mesh with t ...

on October 2, 1990. An

automatic train stop Automatic train stop or ATS is a system on a train that automatically stops a train if certain situations occur (unresponsive train operator, earthquake, disconnected rail, train running over a stop signal, etc.) to prevent accidents. In some scen ...

system was installed at the end of March 2009.

Stations

Image:Oku-oi Rainbow Bridge on Oigawa railway.jpg, Okuoi Rainbow Bridge Image:Ikawasen2.jpg, Mountainous terrain Image:Abt rack rail 02.jpg, Abt rack rail Image:Oigawa-ED903.jpg, Oigawa ED903 rack locomotive

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Oigawa Railway Ikawa Line Railway lines in Japan Rail transport in Shizuoka Prefecture Rack railways in Japan Railway lines opened in 1935 1067 mm gauge railways in Japan 2 ft 6 in gauge railways in Japan

History

Stations

See also

References

External links