阪神本線

Overview

The Hanshin Main Line (HS) opened on 12 April 1905 between Deiribashi and Kobe, the pioneer of Japan's interurban electric railways — and it exists in the shape it does because the government refused to licence a railway running parallel to its own Tokaido Main Line. Hanshin went to the Tramways Act instead, and that legal dodge shaped everything: rather than run straight it detours through Amagasaki, Nishinomiya and the old highway villages, picking up every town on the coast, and the tramway speed limit of 8 mph was ignored from the first day. It was only reclassified from a tramway to a railway on 27 December 1977. Thirty-three stations in 32.1 km makes it the densest of the three Osaka–Kobe trunk routes and the one that runs closest to the sea; stations average almost exactly a kilometre apart. Because the expresses have to get past all of them, the all-stations units are geared for acceleration rather than speed and have been nicknamed ジェットカー for decades — blue 青胴車 against the red 赤胴車 on the expresses. The whole line closed on 17 January 1995 in the Great Hanshin earthquake and came back in seven stages, the last of them that June.

Along the route

Osaka-umeda is underground, and the line stays under until just past Fukushima before climbing onto the viaducts that carry roughly 95% of the route — nine level crossings survive on the entire line, seven of them in Ashiya. Noda, Yodogawa, Himejima and Chibune bring it to Kuise and Daimotsu, where the Namba Line joins and shares track into Amagasaki so the Kintetsu through trains can split there. Then Deyashiki, Amagasaki Centerpool-mae for the boat racing, and Mukogawa, whose platforms stand on the bridge over the river it is named for with the city boundary running through the station. Naruo·Mukogawajoshidai-mae, Koshien for the ballpark, Kusugawa, Imazu, Nishinomiya, Koroen, Uchide, Ashiya — where the platforms sit above the Ashiya river — and on through Fukae, Ogi, Uozaki, Sumiyoshi and Mikage, the closest-spaced stretch on the line. Ishiyagawa, Shinzaike, Oishi, Nishinada and Iwaya lead into the tunnel that runs from there to Motomachi. Motomachi is a terminus on paper only: one island platform, and nearly every train carries straight on west onto the Kobe Kosoku Line, the 直通特急 running all the way to Sanyo-Himeji.

Why play it

This is the reading drill. Seventeen of the thirty-three names cannot be guessed, and several will actively mislead you. 青木 is おおぎ, not あおき — Hanshin's own page for it sits at /station/ogi.html — so a player who knows the kanji types aoki and is rejected on the first keystroke. 大物 is だいもつ, the 大物浦 of the Heike Monogatari, not おおもの. 春日野道 ends in みち, not どう. 香櫨園 is こうろえん, after a 1907 amusement park named for two Osaka merchants, 香野 and 櫨山, and it was written 香枦園 until 2001. Then the rendaku set, where the plain reading always looks more natural than the right one: 千船 ちぶね, 久寿川 くすがわ, 出屋敷 でやしき, 石屋川 いしやがわ, 姫島 ひめじま — with 杭瀬 くいせ, 打出 うちで, 魚崎 うおざき, 御影 みかげ, 新在家 しんざいけ, 西灘 にしなだ, 岩屋 いわや and 大石 おおいし filling out the list. Two spelling quirks sit on top. 今津 ends in づ, so the engine's canonical spelling is imadu against the sign's Imazu — both are accepted. And two names are typed with literal hyphens, because the long bar in a katakana name is a keystroke: 尼崎センタープール前 comes out amagasakisenta-pu-rumae, twenty-three keys with two of them a hyphen. The swing is the widest thing here — 鳴尾・武庫川女子大前 is twenty-four keystrokes, while 野田 and 青木 are four.