International Railroad Discussion > Akagi Tozan Railway

At the end of the road on the top of Akagi Prefectural Park near Maebashi, Japan there are the remnants of a cable railway. The inn at the former terminus has a painting of the arrangement with an hour glass in the middle and a picture of the former Akagi terminus. I am curious so will drive to the Watarase downslope terminus to see if there are any remains. Does anyone know the history of this line?

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Railpax71 Wrote:
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> At the end of the road on the top of Akagi
> Prefectural Park near Maebashi, Japan there are
> the remnants of a cable railway. The inn at the
> former terminus has a painting of the arrangement
> with an hour glass in the middle and a picture of
> the former Akagi terminus. I am curious so will
> drive to the Watarase downslope terminus to see if
> there are any remains. Does anyone know the
> history of this line?

I did a quick Internet lookup, and there is a Japanese wikipedia entry, for those who can read it:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/赤城登山鉄道 (copy & paste the link, if the browser doesn't allow Japanese characters in the URL)

According to the entry, Akagi Tozan Railway operated between 1957 and 1967, funded by Tobu Railway as part of their vision for an Mt. Akagi tourism route between Maebashi and Kiryu via rail/bus connections. Akagi Tozan Railway connected the east leg of the route between Mt. Akagi summit and Riheijaya, due to difficulty in making a road connection on that side. On a map (like Google Maps), you can see how Hwy 70 is disconnected there.

Akagi Tozan Railway was a furnicular railway. 1 km in length using Japan's standard gauge (1067 mm or 3' 6"), 363.4 m (1193') elevation change, maximum grade of 58.6%, and minimum curvate of 300 m (984') radius.

Tourists chose to access Mt. Akagi from the Maebashi side, and JNR provided faster service to Maebashi than Tobu Railway, so the lack of tourists reaching Mt. Akagi from the Kiryu side led the Akagi Tozan Railway to shutdown 10 years later. They still operated the lift and ropeway (gondola) near Mt. Akagi summit since it was still profitable. Akagi Tozan Railway renamed themselves Mt. Akagi Ropeway Company, which got acquired by Tobu Railway Group in 1979. The lift/ropeway operation ceased in 1998.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/14 06:45 by cchan006.

Thanks Charlie. I couldn't make the above link work but succeeded by pasting 赤城登山鉄道 to search in wikipedia directly to bring up the article. I've since found many articles about the railroad and its short history. It is a long way from Akagi station on the Tobu to Rheijaya. I had speculated they ran a connection to JR (now Watarase) at Mizunuma. Next excursion I'll drive highway 70 to Rihejaya Forest where the article claims the lower station exists. My mother-in-law recalls Akagi Tozan but never rode it. I took her for the first time up the curvy highway 4 and then down the extremely narrow curvy highway 16. The railway would have been a much more sane way to reach the top.

#1 Line profile in the inn
#2 View from the top with Lake Onuma in the ancient crater

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