Scenic route
Sanriku Railway Rias Line
Sakari → Kuji · Japan
Sanriku Railway Rias Line in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 163 km
- Fastest time
- 4 h 25 min
- Average speed
- 37 km/h
- Top speed
- 90 km/h
- Operator
- Sanriku Railway
- Train
- Sanriku 36-700 series railcars
- Countries
- Japan
- In service since
- 1984
- Runs
- every 1–2 h per section; several through runs daily
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Japan’s longest third-sector railway follows 163 km of tsunami-rebuilt coast; the final gap closed in 2019, eight years after the 2011 wave.
The Rias Line hugs one of the world’s great drowned coastlines, diving between tunnels to burst onto viaducts above tiny fishing harbours. The 2011 tsunami tore the railway apart, and its station-by-station rebuilding, finished when the last gap closed in 2019, made the red-and-white railcars a national symbol of recovery. In winter, kotatsu trains with heated quilt tables run along the same cliffs.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 9422260 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 5 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Sanriku Railway — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Ofunato’s rebuilt harbour
- Sea-cliff viaducts at Okirai
- Kamaishi steel town
- Jodogahama’s white rocks near Miyako
- Taro’s giant sea walls
- Kuji’s amber coast
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