Kami-Ashibetsu

Departure data for this station is not available on this site.

Kami-Ashibetsu Station opened on 16 January 1920 as a Railway Board station on the Kushiro Main Line (now the Nemuro Main Line) between Shimo-Ashibetsu (today's Ashibetsu) and Nokanan, Hokkaidō. From the outset it served coal-mining sidings — Mitsubishi's third pit was connected via a 4.7 km branch on the day the station opened. Through the 1930s and 1940s Mitsubishi, Meiji and other coal companies added further coal-handling sidings, ropeways and, in 1949, a private railway, while the Imperial Household Forestry Bureau completed the 31.2 km Ashibetsu Forest Railway in November 1934. Freight volume here was among the highest in Japan around 1955. After mine closures from 1963 freight handling shrank, ending on 30 May 1982 when parcel handling stopped too and the station lost its staff and went over to simplified outsourcing; the station building was rebuilt that December. JR Hokkaido inherited the station on 1 April 1987.

Around 1955 Kami-Ashibetsu's freight tonnage was among the highest of any station in Japan, carried above all by the coal shipped from the Mitsubishi and Meiji mines whose sidings fanned out from the station — which is why its yard is still unusually wide.