is an interchange passenger

railway station 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 pre ...

located in the city of

Hikone 280px, Hikone City Hall is a city located in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 111,958 in 49066 households and a population density of 570 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Geography Hikone i ...

Shiga is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Shiga Prefecture has a population of 1,412,916 (1 October 2015) and has a geographic area of . Shiga Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the north, Gifu Pr ...

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 north ...

. It is operated jointly by the

West Japan Railway Company , also referred to as , is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, and ...

(JR West) and the private railway operator

Ohmi Railway is a Japanese private railway company which operates in Shiga Prefecture, and a member of the Seibu group since 1943. The company is named after the Ōmi Province, the former name of the present-day Shiga. The railway is nicknamed by local users ...

Lines

Hikone Station is served by the

Biwako Line The is the nickname used by the operator of the West Japan Railway Company (JR West) to refer to the portion of the Tōkaidō Main Line (between Maibara Station and Kyoto Station) and the Hokuriku Main Line (between Maibara Station and Nagahama ...

portion of the JR

Tōkaidō Main Line The is a major Japanese railway line of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) network, connecting and stations. It is long, not counting its many freight feeder lines around the major cities. The high-speed Tōkaidō Shinkansen largely parallel ...

, and is 6.0 kilometers from and 451.9 kilometers from . It is also a station on the

Ohmi Railway Main Line The is a regional railway line in Shiga Prefecture operated by the private railway operator Ohmi Railway. It connects the cities of Maibara, Shiga, Maibara and Koka, Shiga, Koka. Its alignment is parallel with the Tōkaidō Shinkansen between Tak ...

and is 5.8 kilometers from the starting point of that line at Maibara.

Layout

The JR Station has two opposed

side platform A side platform (also known as a marginal platform or a single-face platform) is a platform positioned to the side of one or more railway tracks or guideways at a railway station, tram stop, or transitway. A station having dual side platforms ...

s serving two tracks. Both platforms are connected to the ticket gate on the bridge over the tracks. The east end of the bridge, on the ground, is the Ohmi Railway station wishbone

island platform An island platform (also center platform, centre platform) is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway interchange. Island platforms are popular on ...

. The station has a ''

Midori no Madoguchi , which stands for ''Multi Access (originally Magnetic-electronic Automatic) seat Reservation System'', is a train ticket reservation system used by the railway companies of former Japanese National Railways, currently Japan Railways Group (JR Grou ...

'' staffed ticket office.

Platform

Adjacent stations

History

The station opened on July 1, 1889 as a station for passengers and cargo on the

Japanese Government Railway The Japanese Government Railways (JGR) was the national railway system directly operated by the Japanese Ministry of Railways ( ja, 鉄道省, Tetsudō-shō, ) until 1949. It was a predecessor of Japanese National Railways and the later Japan Rai ...

(JGR) Tōkaidō Line, which became the

Japan National Railways The abbreviated JNR or , was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987. Network Railways As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated of narrow gauge () railways in all 46 pref ...

(JNR) after World War II. The Ohmi Railway opened on June 11, 1898. Freight operations were discontinued in November 1986. The station came under the aegis of the West Japan Railway Company (JR West) on April 1, 1987 due to the privatization of JNR.

Passenger statistics

In fiscal 2019, the JR station was used by an average of 10,489 passengers daily (boarding passengers only). During the same period, the Ohmi Railway portion of the station was used by 1,371 passengers daily (boarding passengers only)

Surrounding area

Hikone Castle is a Japanese Edo period, Edo-period Japanese castle located in the city of Hikone, Shiga, Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, Japan It is considered the most significant historical building in Shiga. The site has been protected as a Historic Sites of Ja ...

*Ryōtan-ji *

Sawayama Castle was a castle in the city of Hikone, Shiga Prefecture, Japan. This castle was an important military stronghold of Ōmi Province. The Azai clan held this castle in the Sengoku Period. Niwa Nagahide held it after the ruin of the Azai clan and la ...

*Shiga Gokoku Shrine *

Shiga University , or is a national university in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, with campuses in the cities of Ōtsu and Hikone. Founded in 1874, it was chartered as a university in 1949. Faculties & Graduate Schools Shiga University has three faculties, the Fac ...

*Shiga Prefectural Hikone Higashi High School * *

Lake Biwa is the largest freshwater lake in Japan, located entirely within Shiga Prefecture (west-central Honshu), northeast of the former capital city of Kyoto. Lake Biwa is an ancient lake, over 4 million years old. It is estimated to be the 13th ol ...

References

External links

JR West official home page
{{Ohmi Railway Main Line Railway stations in Japan opened in 1889 Tōkaidō Main Line Railway stations in Shiga Prefecture Hikone, Shiga