All Japan rail map request

[ToniBabelony]

Hello all,

 

I'm already planning for the summer holiday and I want to travel around a few days in an efficient manner on a JR East railpass. In this time I'd like to visit some remote private/3rd sector lines, but I can't find any comprehensive map that includes all of Japans railway systems. Is there any map available online? I've been looking for such a map all over, but I can't find any online. I know there is the Japan Railway Atlas or something like that, but that's only available in book form.

 

So if anyone could help me out on this, I'd be very grateful!

 

Thanks in advance!

- Toni

[bikkuri bahn]

Assuming you had no luck finding English maps, take a look at this.  Click on the prefecture, and it will give you a diagrammatic (non-scale) view of the railway lines there:

 

http://www.ryoko.info/rosen/train/

 

I do recommend you purchase an atlas while in Japan though.  It will serve as a good reference, especially when researching railway lines for model subjects.

[Mudkip Orange]

I know this is really trite, but Google.

 

Google Maps has every private and third-sector railway listed, and if you're at the right zoom level they're symbolized differently then the JR lines. If you click on a station you'll get the Kanji for the rail operator. In addition, the station names are given in English, which lets you look up the railway if you can't read Kanji (I can't).

 

For instance, suppose you're planning to get from Osaka up to Kyoto. Using Google, you can see there's four lines; a JR line (black dashed), a Shinkansen (green dashed), and two private lines (gray). You think that the windy, curvy line on the east side of the river looks like it might be more scenic, so you zoom in on it to see that "Hirakatashi" is a major junction station. Typing "Hirakatashi Station" into Google yields a list of search results, the first of which is the Wikipedia article, which tells you that this is part of the Keihan Main Line. The next several links include other sites with station area maps, which you can check out to see if there's anything interesting in the area.

 

Now that you know what railway to use, you can go to Keihan's corporate site, which has both printed timetables as well as a trip planner. Using the trip planner requires knowledge of Kanji, but you can cheat by comparing the Kanji on Google maps with the Kanji on the drop-down trip planner list.

 

Good luck!

[scott]

I like the online approach for that kind of digging, but it would be really helpful to have a large paper or PDF map showing all the lines so that you could get a big-picture view.

[ToniBabelony]

Assuming you had no luck finding English maps, take a look at this.  Click on the prefecture, and it will give you a diagrammatic (non-scale) view of the railway lines there:

 

http://www.ryoko.info/rosen/train/

 

That was the kind of map I was looking for! Thanks!

 

I've not conducted a search in Japanese as atm I was quite in a lazy mood. Google Maps isn't the best option IMO as there isn't much of a 'large' overview of detail in the zoomed-out sections. Some lines are indicated, but it's then not sure if it's a JR, JRF or private line, as the names aren't showing or incorrectly showing (e.g. a parallel road name instead of the railway name).