相鉄本線

Overview

The Sotetsu Main Line (SO) runs 24.6 km west from Yokohama to Ebina in 18 stations. It began as a freight railway. The Jinchu Railway opened its first section, Futamata-gawa to Atsugi, on 12 May 1926 to carry gravel dug from the Sagami River, and built east towards the port in stages until it reached Yokohama on 27 December 1933. Sagami Railway — Sotetsu — absorbed the Jinchu Railway in 1943, handed its management to Tokyu from 1945 to 1947, and then watched the farmland along the line become Yokohama's western suburbs. Double track was laid a section at a time from 1951 and reached Ebina in 1974; the gravel trains ended in 1964, when digging in the river was banned, and the last freight ran in 1998.

For decades the line was a self-contained commuter railway feeding a single terminus at Yokohama. That changed at Nishiya, where the Sotetsu Shin-yokohama Line branches off: it opened to Hazawa yokohama-kokudai in 2019, with trains running on to JR, and to Shin-yokohama in 2023, with trains running on to Tokyu. Since spring 2016 Sotetsu has also been repainting its trains in a single deep blue, YOKOHAMA NAVYBLUE, as part of a company-wide redesign. The line itself was renamed from plain 本線 to 相鉄本線 in 2023.

Along the route

Sotetsu's Yokohama is a terminus of its own, four platforms on the second floor of the company's Joinus building. The line runs out beside JR, under the Hiranuma bridge that gives Hiranuma-bashi its name, to Nishi-yokohama, then curves away onto a viaduct to Tennocho, close to the old Hodogaya post town on the Tokaido road. From Hoshikawa it follows the Katabira River up its valley: Wadamachi, busy with Yokohama National University students, then Kami-hoshikawa, and a climb to Nishiya, where the Shin-yokohama Line tracks join from either side and the Tokaido Shinkansen crosses overhead without stopping.

Beyond Tsurugamine the line leaves the Katabira for the valley of its tributary, the Futamata River, and reaches Futamata-gawa, where the Izumino Line branches off to the south. Kibogaoka serves one of the first housing areas developed along the line after the war. The climb continues through a cutting to Mitsukyo, the highest station on the Sotetsu network, whose name records the point where three villages' boundaries met; the old border between the provinces of Sagami and Musashi ran past its Yokohama end.

West of Mitsukyo the line runs out along the Sagamino plateau. After Seya it crosses the Sakai River into Yamato and drops underground — a change made in 1993, partly to relieve traffic on Route 467 — to meet Odakyu's Enoshima Line. It surfaces again beside Naval Air Facility Atsugi, where jet noise can reach inside the train, and crosses the Tomei Expressway to Sagami-otsuka. Sagamino and Kashiwadai both took their present form in 1975, and Kashiwadai sits beside Sotetsu's Kashiwadai depot. Past the Sagami-Kokubun signal box, where the old freight branch to Atsugi leaves, the track descends the Sagami River terrace to Ebina, next to Odakyu's station.

Why play it

The Main Line has no long names — nothing runs past 13 keystrokes — so it is a rhythm line, and the rhythm is broken by readings. 天王町 is てんのうちょう, and ん before の needs a double n: te-nn-no. Two stations later, 和田町 reads the same 町 as まち. 上星川 follows 星川 two stops after it, so "hoshikawa" comes round twice. 西谷 is にしや, not にしたに.

Sotetsu writes 鶴ケ峰 and 希望ケ丘 with a full-size ケ, where many other sources print ヶ and the district of Kibogaoka is spelt 希望が丘 — three spellings of one が. In Kanji mode either ケ or ヶ is accepted. 三ツ境 mixes a katakana ツ with a 境 read きょう, 大和 is やまと, and 海老名 is えびな, with 海老 — "shrimp" — read as a single word. Near the end come さがみ野 and かしわ台, half hiragana: in Kanji mode the trick is to leave さがみ and かしわ unconverted and change only the last character.