Wakkanai

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

Wakkanai Station opened on 26 December 1928 as Wakkanai-Minato ("Wakkanai Port") Station, an extension of the Sōya Line built to serve the Chihaku ferry route to Sakhalin. In 1939 it was renamed Wakkanai when the earlier station took the name Minami-Wakkanai. A platform-level annex, Wakkanai-Sanbashi, served the ferry pier from 1938 until the route was suspended in August 1945. The station passed to Japanese National Railways in 1949 and to JR Hokkaido at privatisation on 1 April 1987. The second track was abolished in January 2010, leaving the station single-track, and the current fourth-generation station building opened inside the Kitacolor complex on 3 April 2011. The rails and buffer stop removed when the second track was abolished were donated by JR Hokkaido to the city and reassembled in the station plaza in March 2012 as the "Northernmost Rail in Japan" monument, the northernmost rail point having shifted about 100 m south with the new building.

Wakkanai is the northernmost railway station in Japan that is still in operation — the northern terminus of the 259.4 km Sōya Main Line from Asahikawa, numbered W80 — a distinction marked in the station plaza.