Rail companies in Tōhoku region?

[scott]

Are pretty much all the passenger rail services in northern Honshu run by JR East? Are there other operators up that way, and if so, is there an online list somewhere?

 

Also--do some JR East services run through the Seikan Tunnel to Hakodate (or somewhere), or does JR East literally stop at Aomori?

 

(FWIW, I'm getting interested in northern Honshu because of reading about it a lot in Alan Booth's books, and in Hokkaido because it's a place that I'd really like to go for lots of reasons.)

[CaptOblivious]

I can answer at least some of that!

 

JR East does have services that run through the Seikan Tunnel, and offer through services to Hakodate or Sapporo. These include Hakucho limited express from Hachinohe ( http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/routemaps/conventional_line.html#hakucho & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Hakucho) (JR Hokkaido runs a conjugal Super Hakucho service), and Hokutosei and Cassiopeia sleeper train limited expresses serve Hakodate and Sapporo from Tokyo. There must be others, too…

[CaptOblivious]

As for non JR railways:

 

Aoimori Railway was ceded part of the Tohoku main line from Metoki to Hachinohe, when the Tohoku Shinkansen was extended to Hachinohe. JR East trains that use this portion of the former Tohoku main line, like the Hokutosei and Cassiopeiea, charge a surcharge to cover the usage fees Aoimori charges JRE.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aoimori_Railway_Company

 

You'll find this helpful too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railway_companies_in_Japan#T.C5.8Dhoku_region

[scott]

Thanks! That's quite a list of line, and the JR East route map is a very helpful.

 

I should have known this would be a huge can of worms.  :)  I'm not just not used to complex, diverse passenger-rail systems....

[CaptOblivious]

Can of worms? Hardly: It's what we call "opportunity" :D

 

Seriously, I only know this because I too am interested in this area; Ueno Station—my primary interest—is called (at least used to be called) the "gateway to the north", with the result that I'm also very interested in modeling the destinations of the trains that originate there. Hachinohe and Hakodate stations have a lot of diversity to their trains, and would be fun to model the route between them.

[scott]

Can of worms? Hardly: It's what we call "opportunity" :D

 

;D

[Guest ___]

Can of worms? Hardly: It's what we call "opportunity" :D

 

Seriously, I only know this because I too am interested in this area; Ueno Station—my primary interest—is called (at least used to be called) the "gateway to the north", with the result that I'm also very interested in modeling the destinations of the trains that originate there. Hachinohe and Hakodate stations have a lot of diversity to their trains, and would be fun to model the route between them.

 

Horay for Ueno, my old home base.

[scott]

The more I look into it, the more I'm interested in northern Honshu than Hokkaido for modeling (not that I'm trying to model anything specific right now), even though Hokkaido might be my first choice of an area to visit. It just seems like a lot of the service in Hokkaido is diesel-powered, and I just prefer electrics.

 

Of course, by this time next week I may have moved to Kyushu or something.  ::)

 

Horay for Ueno, my old home base.

 

What did you do there?