R.I.P. Hokushinkyuko Railway

[Socimi]

On the 1st of June, the Hokushinkyuko Railway company, the operator of the 7km-long Hokushin Rapid Railway Line in Kobe, was absorbed by the city's Municipal Bureau of Transportation, with the trasfer finalizing in these days.

 

https://kisspress.jp/shared/img/articles/basic/24600-24699/24651/img5d82d57edf017_xl.jpg

 

An Hokushinkyuko Railway 7000 Series speeding trough the Hokushin Line's 7-Km Long tunnel.

Both the trains and the line have been transferred to Kobe's Municipal Transportation Bureau on the 1st of June.

Source: https://kisspress.jp/articles/24651/

 

The Hokushin Line was envisioned as a northwards extension of the Kobe Subway's Seishin-Yamate Line, designed to connect the subway's terminus of Shin-Kobe (were passengers could change to the San'yo Shinkansen) to Tanigami Station on the Shintetsu Arima Line, acting as a bypass of the latter.

As Kobe's Municipal Bureau of Transportation had it's finaces quite stretched from the recently-inaugurated westwards Seishin-Yamate Line extension to Seishin-Chuo, a third-sector company was tasked the construction of the Hokushin Line: the Hokushinkyuko Railway, wich was to be a subsidiary of Hankyu Railway. Thanks to this, Kobe City was able to spend not a single yen on the Hokushin Line.

The Hokushin Line finally opened in 1988 as a 7-Km long tunnel from Shin-Kobe to Tanigami, with no intermediate stations. In fact it was the longest tunnel on a non-JR line until the opening of the Hokuetsu Express line in Niigata prefecture, nine years later.

As the line was to be an extension of the subway, it was designed with trough-running services in mind, and as such, all Hokushinkyuko Railway trains travel the whole length of the two lines, from Tanigami to Seishin-Chuo, as all subway trains do too.

 

In retrospective, the line could've never been able to achieve a profit, due to the high construction costs, wich translated in a heavy debt, and not having a single intermediate station didn't help either in increasing ridership. In fact, Hokushinkyuko Railway managed only half of a station: Tanigami (wich was jointly operated with Shintetsu, Shin-Kobe was fully operated by the Transportation Bureau).

 

The final blow to the line's future arrived a few years after the opening: the burst of the Economic Bubble, wich axed nationwide the finaces of railway companies.

But depsite such gloomy prospects, the line carried on...

 

...and in 2014, the company made a breaktrough with the introduction of one of the first fully-Anime-styled official mascots for a railway company: Kyuko Kitakami, shinto shrine maiden, train driver and Hokushinkyuko Railway's very own guardian deity!

 

Immediately well-recieved, it boosted Hokushinkyuko Railway's popularity, and was quickly followed by three others: Noriolith (a squirrer-station assistant), Ourai Kitakami (rolling stock maintainance technician and Kyuko's older brother) and finally, Hokushinton, the line's tunnel itself! - a grand total of four, wich made Hokushinkyuko Railway famous for having the highest "mascot per kilometer" ratio out of all Japanese railways.

 

Mascots' profiles on the company website

(The company's website has also been taken down, but it's still avaible on the Wayback Machine)

 

Due to it's situation, Hokushinkyuko Railway was also famous for being insanely active in promoting itself, promotng other railway companies (such as Kominato Railway) or even promoting a blood-donation campaign, using, among other things, a plethora of headmarks for it's trains.

 

Depsite the surge in popularity, Hokushinkyuko was still losing copious amounts of money, and after transferring the ownership and maintainance of it's tracks to the Kobe Rapid Transit railway in 2002 (a "train-less" railway company wich owns the Kobe Kosoku Line, an all-underground railway paralleling the Seishin-Yamate Line wich connects the Hankyu, Hanshi, Sanyo and Shintetsu railways), the final decision (supported by Hankyu Railway, wich owns Hokushinkyuko) to disband the company and transfer it's assets to the City of Kobe was made in 2018, and on the 1st of June 2020, the company disbanded.

 

From now on, the Hokushinkyuko Line will provisionally be the "Kobe Subway Hokushin Line", and will be eventually merged with the Seishin-Yamate Line at a later date.

The four (recently refurbished) 7000 Series trains have also been transferred to the Kobe Subway; they will retain their brown and cream livery until their retiremet, wich is scheduled for 2023.
They will be very probably replaced with the 6000 Series, wich is being introduced by the Kobe Subway to replace all of it's three train types currently in service (the 1000 Series of 1977, 2000 Series of 1988 and the 3000 Series of 1993).

 

Finally, what will happen to the four mascots?

Well, they'll follow the path of the real-life employees: they will be now employed by the Municipal Bureau of Transportation!

 

 

TV report about the Hokushin Line's handover

 

 

Last day of Hokushinkyuko Railway operation (31st of May) videos :

 

by jo oku (rear cab ride from Tanigami to Seishin-Chuo)

 

and back, from Seishin-Chuo to Tanigami (also by jo oku)

 

and by Srd, 

 

 

 

[disturbman]

Thanks for the summary. I cannot believe that level of complexity, it's seems absurd. The fact that this "line" will not (cannot?) directly be merged with the line it's actually an extension is just 🤨

[Socimi]

24 minutes ago, disturbman said:

Thanks for the summary. I cannot believe that level of complexity, it's seems absurd. The fact that this "line" will not (cannot?) directly be merged with the line it's actually an extension is just 🤨

 

Well, depsite being now operated by the same company, the Seishin-Yamate and the Hokushin Lines will still be operationally separated for quite some time: for example, they will still change drivers at Shin-Kobe, as the ex-Hokushinkyuko drivers aren't familiar with the rest of the Seishin-Yamate Line and vice-versa.

 

Once this (and a few other) issues will be solved, the two will be operationally merged, altough it's very well possible that they'll keep separate names.

 

As a side note, the Seishin-Yamate Line istelf is actually also a merger of two lines: the Seishin Line (from Seishin-Chuo to Shin-Nagata) and the Yamanote Line (from Shin-Nagata to Shin-Kobe), altough this division exists only on the city's transport plans.

Edited June 17, 2020 by Socimi

[HankyuDentetsu]

That was a great summary and a great read, Socimi - thank you!

[Das Steinkopf]

On the upside absorption is a far better fate than abolition, whilst the line may lose some of its character over time at least it's still running and providing a service, I think this is more important point as you only have to look what has happened to a number of the various JR entities unprofitable lines.