相模原線

Overview

The Keio Sagamihara Line (KO) runs 22.6 km from Chofu to Hashimoto in 12 stations. It leaves the Keio Line just west of Chofu, crosses the Tama River into Kawasaki, runs the length of Tama New Town and ends in Sagamihara at the JR Yokohama Line. It is the only Keio line that reaches Kanagawa, and it weaves back and forth across the Tokyo–Kanagawa border on the way. Almost every train carries on over the Keio Line to Shinjuku, many onto the Toei Shinjuku Line, both separate lines in the game. The numbers pick up where the Keio Line leaves off, KO35 to KO45, while Chofu keeps its own KO18.

It began as a gravel railway. In 1916 Keio's predecessor opened a 1 km branch from Chofu to the Tama riverbed to carry gravel into Tokyo, and the terminus was called 多摩川原, "Tama riverbed"; from 1927 it also carried day-trippers to Keiokaku, an amusement park beside the station whose site is now a velodrome. When Tama New Town was planned, the branch became Keio's way in. It reached Keio-yomiuri-land and was renamed the Sagamihara Line in 1971, after a city it would not reach for another nineteen years. It got to Keio-tama-center on 18 October 1974, Minami-osawa in 1988 and Hashimoto on 30 March 1990. Tamasakai, which Machida petitioned for, opened in 1991. Since the tracks at Chofu went underground in 2012, the line has had no level crossings.

Along the route

From the underground platforms at Chofu the line swings hard left and climbs onto a viaduct to Keio-tamagawa, the old gravel terminus. Across the river, Keio-inadazutsumi, Keio's first station in Kanagawa, stands over the JR Nambu Line. The Nambu's own Inadazutsumi is a separate station a few hundred metres away, but Keio lists it as the transfer and the game joins them. The line turns west along the foot of the Tama Hills to Keio-yomiuri-land, the terminus until 1974, where the Sky Shuttle gondola climbs to the Yomiuriland amusement park.

Inagi to Wakabadai is 3.3 km, the longest gap between neighbouring stations anywhere on Keio. Wakabadai stands in Kawasaki, while the neighbourhood it was named after lies across the border in Inagi, Tokyo. Past its depot the Odakyu Tama Line closes in from the left, and the two railways tunnel side by side into Tama city to twin stations, Keio-nagayama and Keio-tama-center, each with an Odakyu namesake. The prefixes are there because both lines run to Shinjuku, and passengers had to be kept off the wrong company's train. Tama-center is the heart of the new town, a short walk from Sanrio Puroland.

Beyond it the Odakyu line peels away, and the Keio line tunnels under a golf course into Hachioji. Keio-horinouchi is named after a Heian-era warrior family's moated residence, and it gained the Keio prefix because Keikyu already had a Horinouchi. Minami-osawa serves Tokyo Metropolitan University. Then the 809 m Minami-osawa tunnel, Keio's longest mountain tunnel, leads to Tamasakai, Keio's only station in Machida. The line crosses the Sakai River into Sagamihara and ends at Hashimoto, where JR Central is building the Kanagawa station of the Chuo Shinkansen maglev.

Why play it

Six of the twelve names start with 京王. The signs spell it Keio, but the kana is けいおう, so the game wants keiou, u included, every time: 30 of the line's 140 keystrokes go on the prefix alone. The knack is to make it one motion rather than five letters. The same hidden vowel turns up in 調布 (choufu) and in 南大沢, みなみおおさわ, whose double o the sign squeezes into Minami-osawa.

Then the scripts start to mix. 京王稲田堤 has a づ, which you can type as zu, the way Keio signs it, or as du, the way an IME spells it; both are accepted. 京王よみうりランド is Yomiuri-land in English, but the kana is らんど, so you type rando, not land. The long bar in 京王多摩センター is typed with the hyphen key. The two longest names on the line, 京王稲田堤 and 京王よみうりランド at 17 keystrokes each, come back to back at stations 3 and 4.

Kanji mode is harder still. 京王よみうりランド mixes kanji, hiragana and katakana: an IME will usually offer 読売 for よみうり, which the game will not take, and ランド has to stay in katakana. 京王堀之内 uses 之, read の, where Keikyu's Horinouchi is 堀ノ内 with a katakana ノ, so an IME that offers the Keikyu spelling first costs you the station. The breathers are 稲城, five keystrokes, and 若葉台 and 多摩境 at nine.