Nagoya Tram

Nagoya urban tram
Car in 2017 in the municipal transport museum
Basic information
Country	Japan
city	Nagoya
opening	1898
Shutdown	1974
operator	Nagoya Tourist Office
Infrastructure
Formerly the largest route	106.3 km
Gauge	1067 mm ( cape track )
Power system	600 V = overhead line
Network plan from 1961

View of the town hall at the end of the 1930s

Articulated wagon type 2600 during the war on the Sakaemachi (栄 町)

Nakamura Denki-kidō railcar in the 1930s

Tsukiji Denki railcar in the 1930s

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

The Nagoya tram , or Nagoya Urban Tram ( Japanese 名古屋 市 電 , Nagoya-shiden ) was the tram network of the city of Nagoya on the island of Honshū in Japan . It was opened in 1898 by the private company Nagoya Denki-tetsudō (名古屋 電 気 鉄 道), steadily expanded and, after being taken over by the city, continued to be operated by the municipal transport authority (名古屋 市 交通局, Nagoya-shi Kōtsū-kyoku ). After further network expansion until the post-war period, operations were gradually discontinued until 1974.

After the success of Japan's first electric tram in Kyōto , the Nagoya Denki-tetsudō company decided to immediately run its network in Nagoya, originally planned as a horse-drawn tram, as an electric one, and in 1898 took the country's second electric railway operation on the route from Sasashima (笹 島) near the Central station over 2.2 km to the prefecture office. A special feature was the atypical right-hand traffic used in the first years of operation . The next line was built in 1901 from Yanagibashi (柳 橋) to Oshikirichō (押 errichtet 町) as the starting point for an overland railway network heading northwest. In the course of its further development, the section built from there in 1910 to Biwajimabashi (枇杷 島 橋) was rededicated two years later as a railway; the trains continued to run on tram tracks to Yanagibashi until 1941. The further expansion started hesitantly at first. The starting line was extended to Chikusa (千種) in 1903 and other routes could only be built from 1908, which for the most part formed a rough grid of north-south or east-west lines in the city center. The port areas in the south were also connected with priority. In 1919, the route of the Atsuta Denki-kidō (熱 田 電 気 軌道), which led from the southern Atsuta to the eastern port from 1910, was also taken over. The route length grew to 42.5 km by the end of 1921.

The localization of the tram operation did not succeed until 1922; Unlike in comparable cases in Japan, the entire original operating company was not absorbed into the urban transport system, but the company, known since then as Meitetsu , still operates an extensive railway network in the Nagoya metropolitan area. The expansion was continued by the city, but they always fell short of the generous plans - also due to the adverse effects of the Pacific War. In 1936/37, further private-sector tram networks were incorporated on the outskirts - namely the Nakamura Denki-kidō (中 村 電 気 軌道), whose route west of the main train station had existed since 1913, the Shimonoishiki Densha-kidō (下 之一 色 電車 軌道) and Tsukiji Denki (築 地)電 軌), which from 1913 and 1917 operated a joint large-scale half-ring line west of the port (completion 1926). Likewise the Shinmikawa Tetsudō (新 三河 鉄 道) with its from 1908 as a horse-drawn tram in operation, electrified 1912 network in the east. A short section of this was discontinued in 1944 as an advance payment for the planned conversion to O-bus operation; this was recorded on 6.1 km in 1943, but never came over the route Higashi-Ōzone-Sakurayamachō (東 大 曽 根 〜 桜 山 町) until it was discontinued in 1951 and should in turn be displaced by the tram.

During the war, the route of the former Atsuta Denki-kidō was moved to connect it to a newly created large tangent in the southeast. After the war damage had been overcome, the network was expanded further until 1960, when the largest network expansion was reached at over 106 km. In addition, from 1957 the first urban subway line supplemented local transport. Due to the progressive underground railway construction and the new car-friendly traffic policy, the first line closures followed as early as 1961, which gradually shrank the network. By 1974 there were only 20 km of track left, which were shut down with operations at the end of March 1974.

In addition to the now four underground lines, buses and individual railway extensions were responsible for transport services.

The Tourist Office operates a local transport museum with original vehicles and free entry.

Web links

Commons : Nagoya City Tram  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• City information on the Transport Museum (Japanese)