The is a railway line in the Tohoku Region of Japan, operated by

East Japan Railway Company The is a major passenger railway company in Japan and is the largest of the seven Japan Railways Group companies. The company name is officially abbreviated as JR-EAST or JR East in English, and as in Japanese. The company's headquarters ar ...

(JR East). It links

Hachinohe Station is a railway station operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East) in Hachinohe, Aomori, Japan. Lines Hachinohe Station is served by the high-speed Tōhoku Shinkansen line between and , and forms the starting point of the Hachinohe L ...

Hachinohe, Aomori is a city located in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 221,459, and a population density of 725 persons per km2 in 96,092 households, making it Aomori Prefecture's second largest city by population. The city ...

with Kuji Station in

Kuji, Iwate is a Japanese city in Iwate Prefecture. , the city had an estimated population of 34,418 in 15,675 households, and a population density of 55 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Kuji is in far northeastern Iwate Prefect ...

. The line stretches 64.9 km along the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the conti ...

coast with a total of 25 stations. The section between Hachinohe and Same stations is also known as the .

Stations

;Legend :◇, ∨, ∧ - Trains can pass each other at this station :｜ - Trains cannot pass

Rolling stock

New KiHa E130-500 series diesel multiple unit trains were introduced on the Hachinohe Line from 2 December 2017, displacing the ageing

KiHa 40 series The is a diesel multiple unit (DMU) train type introduced by Japanese National Railways (JNR) in 1977 and operated by all Japan Railways Group companies on suburban and rural services in Japan. Since 2017, the train type has seen use by other ...

DMUs. All services on the line will be operated by KiHa E130-500 series DMUs from the start of the revised timetable on 17 March 2018. The fleet consists of six two-car units and six single-car units.

History

In 1894, a

spur line A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Industrial spur An industr ...

connecting Shiriuchi (now ) on the Tohoku Main Line with Hachinohe (now was completed. This line was soon extended south to the now-defunct Minato Station. After the nationalization of the Nippon Railway in 1907, the spur line was renamed the Hachinohe Line in 1909. From 1924, the line's name was written with its current

characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

, and the southern terminus of the line was extended to in Iwate Prefecture. The following year it reached , and in 1930 it reached its present southern terminus of where it connected to the

Sanriku Railway The is a railway company in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan. The company and its lines are also known as . The company was founded in 1981, as the first " third sector" (half public, half private) railway line in the country, excluding specia ...

Kita-Rias Line The is a railway company in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan. The company and its lines are also known as . The company was founded in 1981, as the first "Public-Private Partnerships In Japan, third sector" (half State ownership, public, half ...

, which links Kuji with in southern Iwate. Freight operations were phased out at most stations between 1982 and 1986. With the privatization of the

Japanese 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 pre ...

(JNR) on April 1, 1987, the Hachinohe Line came under the control of the

(JR East), with remaining freight operations transferred to the

Japan Freight Railway Company , or , is one of the seven constituent companies of Japan Railways Group (JR Group). It provides transportation of cargo nationwide throughout Japan. Its headquarters are in Shibuya, Tokyo near Shinjuku Station. The Japan Railways Group was fou ...

(JR Freight) at Hachinohe Freight Terminal.

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami

The line was damaged by the

2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami The occurred at 14:46 Japan Standard Time, JST (05:46 UTC) on 11 March. The Moment magnitude scale, magnitude 9.0–9.1 (M) Submarine earthquake, undersea megathrust earthquake had an epicenter in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Oshika Peni ...

on March 11, 2011, and services were suspended on the section between and , with a number of vehicles trapped at Kuji Station. Services over the entire line resumed on March 17, 2012.

References

External links