神戸本線

Overview

The Hankyu Kobe Line (HK) is the middle of Hankyu's three trunk lines: 16 stations and 32.3 km from Osaka-umeda to Kobe-sannomiya, laid almost dead straight for one reason. When it opened on 16 July 1920 the Hanshin Main Line had already been running along this corridor for fifteen years, curving through every town on the coast, and the new line was built to beat it on speed. The straightness was worth something concrete: although it was licensed under the Tramways Act, like the Takarazuka Line, that alignment won it authorisation for 35 mph where the Act normally allowed 25. By 1934 its limited expresses were covering Umeda to Kobe in 25 minutes, a 78 km/h average that is still the fastest Hankyu has ever timetabled. Two bottlenecks had to go first. Until 1926 the Umeda–Juso stretch ran over the Takarazuka Line's street track; a separate elevated pair opened that July. And the Kobe end stopped short of the city until 1936, held up by a city council that insisted railways enter Kobe underground — which is why the original terminus, Kamitsutsui, is not on this line at all today.

Along the route

Stations are 2.15 km apart on average, long spacing for an urban private railway, and it is why the locals run at around 100 km/h alongside the expresses. Out of Osaka-umeda the line uses the west pair of the quadruple track that legally belongs to the Takarazuka Line, which is why Nakatsu has platforms here and none on the Kyoto Line's later-built east pair. Past Juso it crosses the Kanzakigawa, clips a corner of Toyonaka without stopping, and runs flat across the Osaka plain through Sonoda, Tsukaguchi and Mukonoso — the 3.3 km from there to Nishinomiya-kitaguchi is the longest gap on the line. Nishinomiya-kitaguchi is the junction with the Imazu Line, and west of it the character changes: the line climbs the skirt of the Rokko range on intermittent grades through Shukugawa, Ashiyagawa, Okamoto and Mikage, the belt of hillside suburbs that Hankyu's own land development built and that gave 阪神間モダニズム its name. The one real brake is the S-curve just east of Mikage, forced when the Asahi Shimbun's co-founder organised his neighbours against the land purchase — his estate is the Kosetsu Museum now. It was held to 65 km/h for decades and only reached 90 in 2006. Rokko, Oji-koen and the narrow platform at Kasuganomichi bring the line into Kobe-sannomiya, where the trains carry straight on west onto the Kobe Kosoku Line towards Shinkaichi.

Why play it

The trap is the second stop out of Umeda, and it is the same one the Kyoto Line sets: 十三 is じゅうそう, not じゅうさん. Hankyu prints it Juso, four letters against the six the kana actually asks for — juusou — and that gap between sign and keyboard runs through the whole line. Osaka-umeda is oosakaumeda, Mukonoso is mukonosou, Rokko is rokkou, Oji-koen is oujikouenn: six of the sixteen names are printed with the long vowel simply dropped. The terminal is the one worth practising. 神戸三宮 is こうべさんのみや, and because its ん lands in front of の the engine will not take a single n there — the canonical spelling is koubesannnomiya, three n's in a row. Kanzakigawa is the instructive contrast: its ん sits before ざ, the single n survives, and it is plainly kanzakigawa. Elsewhere, 春日野道 is かすがのみち and not かすがのどう, 武庫之荘's 荘 reads そう, and 六甲 hides a sokuon that doubles the k. The range is wide for sixteen stops: Nishinomiya-kitaguchi runs to twenty keystrokes while 十三, 園田, 御影 and 六甲 all tie at six.