京都本線

Overview

The Hankyu Kyoto Line (HK) is Hankyu Railway's longest line — 28 stations and 47.7 km from Osaka-umeda to Kyoto-kawaramachi, unusually straight double track cleared for 115 km/h. Hankyu did not build it. It was laid by Shin-Keihan Railway, a subsidiary of arch-rival Keihan, as a fast bypass of the winding Keihan Main Line: Tenjimbashi to Awaji opened in 1925, on a licence bought from the Kita-Osaka Electric Railway, whose Juso–Awaji–Toyotsu line had opened in April 1921. The route reached Kyoto-saiin in 1928, and the Saiin–Omiya tunnel that followed on 31 March 1931 was the Kansai region's first underground railway, two years ahead of the Osaka municipal subway. Wartime consolidation folded Keihan into Keihanshin Kyuko Electric Railway in 1943; when Keihan was demerged in 1949 the Shin-Keihan Line stayed with Hankyu and was renamed the Kyoto Main Line, and the last piece, Omiya to Kawaramachi, opened in 1963. One number is missing from the list: HK02, Nakatsu. The Osaka-umeda–Juso stretch is legally the Takarazuka Line's quadruple track, and the eastern pair the Kyoto Line uses was laid later with no land left for a platform — so every train, locals included, passes Nakatsu without stopping, and Hankyu leaves it off this line's timetables and route maps entirely.

Along the route

Out of Osaka-umeda the line crosses the Shin-Yodogawa to Juso, and from there it climbs the right bank of the Yodo River all the way to Kyoto with JR's Tokaido Main Line shadowing it the whole way. Minamikata, Sozenji, then Awaji, where trains swap onto Hankyu's own Senri Line — the path by which Osaka Metro Sakaisuji Line services reach this line, a reciprocal through service that began in 1969 and today runs from Tengachaya. Kami-shinjo, Aikawa, Shojaku, Settsu-shi and Minami-ibaraki lead to Ibaraki-shi, then Sojiji, Tonda and Takatsuki-shi, where the through locals normally turn back. Past there the corridor narrows: Kammaki, Minase, Oyamazaki and Nishiyama-tennozan are squeezed between the river and Tennozan alongside the Tokaido Shinkansen and the Meishin Expressway. Nagaoka-tenjin, Nishi-muko, Higashi-muko and Rakusaiguchi carry the line on to Katsura, where seasonal direct limited expresses peel off for the Arashiyama Line, and after Nishikyogoku the last four stops — Saiin, Omiya, Karasuma and Kyoto-kawaramachi — are in tunnel under Shijo-dori through the middle of the city.

Why play it

The trap is one stop out of Osaka-umeda. 十三 is Juso, じゅうそう, not じゅうさん, and everybody falls into it once. After that the line keeps handing you readings that will not be guessed: 富田 is Tonda, 総持寺 そうじじ, 崇禅寺 そうぜんじ, 正雀 しょうじゃく, 洛西口 らくさいぐち, and 西院 is さいいん here, though the Randen station across the road reads the same kanji さい. 上牧 adds a romanization wrinkle of its own — the kana are かんまき, but Hankyu signs it Kammaki, Hepburn's m before k. Nishi-muko and Higashi-muko arrive back to back, にしむこう then ひがしむこう, a matched pair separated only by their prefixes. And the rhythm swings hard: 淡路 and 富田 come out at five keystrokes each, the shortest on the line, while にしやまてんのうざん runs to ten kana and twenty keystrokes, the longest.