Kitayama Rail Pages
About Kitayama Rail
There is one page for each of the 47 Japanese prefectures. The page consist of
three blocks; the links, the line tables and the statistics.
Links
From here you can go to all main pages and the pages for the adjacent
prefectures.
You will also find links to the different sections in the line tables block.
If I have created a map for the prefecture, you will find a link to it here!
Line tables
"Line tables" is a set of tables with all railway lines in the prefecture.
It's divided into five sections:
- Shinkansen lines
- JR lines (other than the Shinkansen lines)
- Non-JR lines
- Metro (Subway/Underground) lines
- Tramways
Each table has the same layout:
| Name |
Major stations |
Length
(km) |
Comments |
| JR Hokkaidō |
| Chitose | Tomakomai - Numanohata - Minami-Chitose - Shiroishi -
Sapporo | 56.6 |
|
- The table is divided into sections for each railway company. A short form of
the company
name is shown as a section header, like "JR Hokkaidō" in the example.
- Name: Every railway in Japan has a name. You will find in timetables, on
maps etc.
For every line you can click on the line name to get to the Line page for that
line.
- Major stations: Start and end of the line as well as major cities and
stations along the line.
If the line passes the prefecture border, an appropriate station (e g the next
city or the next junction)
in the other prefecture is used as "end point". This is marked by [ ], e g
[Aomori].
Sometimes two lines can run in parallel. Stations on the "second" line are
marked with grey background
and a smaller font.
- Length: If a line passes the prefecture border, I have just splited the
distance between
the "border stations". This is not an exact science!
For parallel lines is the length of the "second" line not shown here in order to
avoid double-counting of the
distance.
- Comments: Any comments needed to be able to identify the line. All other
comments are
on the Line page.
Statistics
Some basic statistical data. There is also a ranking starting with 1 for the
largest
prefecture, the prefecture with most inhabitants and the prefecture with most
railways.
Finally a list of all cities in the prefecture with more than 100.000 persons.
The
prefectural capital is shown in bold .
The lines are grouped into "Line pages". All major lines have their own page,
minor lines
are grouped per perfecture on one or several pages.
Header
The header is just a list of lines on this page. From each row in the list,
there's a link
to the line section.
Example of header list:
Line section
The section is divided into blocks for each railway.
The full names in Japanese and English are shown in italics below the short
name, if
I have been able to find them!
For each railway are the lines listed. The line type is shown in italics below
the line
name if it is something else than a normal JR /Non-JR line.
Each railway/line have a short description of the line. I have tried to
collection data about opening year, traffic pattern, tunnels and other
line-related things that are interesting for a rail fan. The most important part
is however the station table with all major stations along the line.
Explanation of the station table:
- General: Sometimes two lines can run in parallel. Stations on the "second"
line are marked
with grey background and a smaller font to indicate this.
- Map: There is a link to the very detailed Mapion map. You will get the most
detailed scale availbale for the station!
- Major stations: I have included all stations with connecting lines, stations
with
the same name as a city "-shi", and some other station that could be of
interest.
Station names in bold are the main station in a larger
city.
- Connecting lines: The railway and line name of all connect lines at this
station.
The name is always linked to the line page of the connect line-
If the connecting line is shown in bold , most trains
are
through trains. If the connecting line is shown in italics
,
the connection line is not using the same station, but it is within walking
distance.
If the station name on the connecting line differs, the name is shown within []
brackets,
e.g. [Shin-Matsuda].
- Km: Distances.
- City: The administrative district of the station. The reason for including
it is that
sometimes the name of the station could differ from the place name. The suffix
indicates
the status of the district:
- -shi: City
- -machi or -chō: Town - smaller places than Cities
- -mura: Village - even smaller places!
In Tōkyō is the town district "-ku" shown.
- Prefecture: The prefecture is shown only for the first station in each
prefecture.
This page is a list of all 47 prefectures in Japan together with some general
and railway-specific data about them.
Most columns are self-explanatory.
Just some comments:
The length of the prefecture's railways is based on the data compiled by me when
creating the "Kitayama Rail Pages".
The railway density is a measurement that shows how much railways the prefecture
has related to its area.
Data for some other countries: Germany 127, Switerland 123, Belgium 123 (the
three top in the world); Sweden 27.
The railway penetration is a similar measurement to show how much railways the
prefecture has per capita.
Data for some other countries: Canada 260, Australia 256, Sweden 140, New
Zealand 140 (top four in the world);
Switerland 72.
The line index is an alphabetic list of all lines with hyper links to the
corresponding
Line page. If a line doesn't have a specific name, the railway name is used, but
marked with
a "*" after the name to indicate that the name is a railway name and not a line
name!
I have sometimes added an "extra" name to distinguish between branches,
translate a part of the name
etc. Such "extra" names are within ().
The station index is an alphabetic list of all stations listed in Kitayama Rail
Pages with hyper links to the corresponding
Line page. You can also open a Mapion map for the station in a new window by
clicking on the "Map" link.
History
I've always been interested in railways - particularly in timetables and maps.
I love to travel by train and enjoy the scenery from the seat and to walk around
in
busy or rural stations. The interest for Japanese railways started on a vacation
trip
to Asia in 1993. I realised that Japan had an extensive rail network, that I
wanted to
explore, either at home as "Desktop traveller" or in real life on the rails.
But, both the language and the distance was a huge barrier to get information
about the
Japanese Rail network. However, I managed to get some information. I found a
good atlas (Teikoku)
on a sale in a Stockholm book-shop. That's how my deep interest for Japan's
railways started.
Finally I get hold a a timetable book from 1993.
The latter one is a challenge
itself, as it is completly in Japanese. I decided to do a "survey" - a list of
all railways
in Japan. In the summer 2001, I started the survey, and used Internet a lot to
find
all the information I wanted. I stored the information in Excel. After a while I
realised
that there was nothing like my list in English on the Internet. I decided to
learn a bit
about HTML and create a site. Nowadays you can find a lot of similar information
in Wikipedia, but I have decided to keep my work updated!
The first version of the site was published in October 2001
with just a few prefectures. I realised that it wasn't fun. A lot of boring
typing of
HTML-code. I took a new approach; all the information is stored in an Oracle
database
on my PC. I'm using PL/SQL-scripts to generate the web pages. Much faster, much
more
reliable, fewer errors etc. A disadvantage of this approach is the the pages
could be
a bit "to structured".
Future
It will take some time to build the Kitayama Rail Pages. In April 2002 I
finished the complete list of all rail lines in Japan with their major stations.
It's continously updated.
I will also create maps - the information on this site is a bit hard to digest
without good maps.
This page is updated May 08, 2010
