Kanazawa tram

Kanazawa tram
Car # 1 at Kenrokuen in the early days
Basic information
Country	Japan
city	Kanazawa
opening	1919
Shutdown	1967
operator	Hokuriku Tetsudō
Infrastructure
Formerly the largest route	12.9 km
Gauge	1067 mm ( cape track )
Power system	600 V = overhead line

The Kanazawa tram ( Japanese 金 沢 市 内線 , Kanazawa shinai-sen ) was the tram network of the city of Kanazawa on the island of Honshū in Japan . It has been operated by the private company Kanazawa Denki-kidō ( 金 沢 電 気 軌道 ) since it opened in 1919 , which became part of the Hokuriku Tetsudō ( 北 陸 鉄 道 , Hokutetsu 北 鉄 for short) from 1941 , and discontinued after a brief period of prosperity in 1967.

history

View of the Katamachidōri ( 片 町 通 ) in the early days

Network development (continuous = existing, interrupted / dotted = shut down)

The network went into operation on February 2, 1919 on the connection station - Kenrokuen and was expanded in the same year to Kodatsuno ( 小 立 野 ) on the one hand and as a branch from the original route south to Saigawa-ōhashi ( 犀 川 大橋 ) on the other hand; In addition, both branches were connected to each other with a clasp, so that from now on the castle complex was surrounded by a tram ring.

In the following year, the line could be extended south to Nomachi ( 野 町 ) and tied through with the line of the former Shōkin Densha-tetsudō ( 松 金 電車 鉄 道 ) to Mattō ( 松 任 ) 8 km away . In 1921 this new line was branched off to Teramachi ( 寺 町 ) and in 1922 from the original line to the northeast to Kosakajinja-mae ( 小 坂 神社 前 ).

Changes did not arise again until the war, when the operating company was united with others from 1941 to form Hokuriku Tetsudō. After that, the connection to Matto was abandoned; the line south of Nomachi was rededicated to the railway in 1944 and partially closed. During the war in 1945, a large block loop at the station and the first part of the northeast extension to Higashi-Kanazawa ( 東 金 沢 , East Kanazawa) went into operation, which was completed by the end of the year. The network thus reached its greatest extent of almost 13 km before the increasing individual traffic began to clog up.

After many years of discussion about the maintenance of the network, a fatal accident in 1965 was the decisive factor in decommissioning, which began the following year with the conversion of the northeast branch to bus operation and was completed on February 11, 1967 with a complete shutdown. The separate overland tram to Kanaiwa ( 金石 ), founded in 1898 and taken over by Hokutetsu in 1943, operated until 1971.

The transport service was taken over by an extensive bus network and the two suburban railway lines of the same company that have remained until today; Occasional proposals to rebuild a tram network have not gotten beyond the discussion stage since then.

Web links

• Previous operator's website on the subject (Japanese)