Minakami Station is in Minakami Town, Gunma Prefecture. East Japan Railway Company (JR East) runs it. It opened on 30 October 1928.
History
The station opened on 30 October 1928 with the opening of the section between Gokan Station and this station on the national Jōetsu South Line. On 15 August 1931 a locomotive shed was opened here. On 1 September 1931 the Shimizu Tunnel was completed, and the Jōetsu Line between this station and Echigo-Yuzawa opened, which completed the line. At the same time the section between this station and Ishiuchi was electrified.
In the early morning of 4 September 1951 a fire broke out near the staff quarters on the second floor. The station building and the overbridge were burned down. A new two-storey concrete block station building came into use on 1 January 1952.
A tourist centre opened on 15 December 1970. Freight handling ended on 11 October 1978, except for wagon-load freight for private sidings, which ended on 15 August 1983. Parcel handling ended on 1 February 1984. On 1 November 1986 the Minakami locomotive depot was closed and became the Mizukami branch of the Nagaoka Train Operations Office. On 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR East.
In its final years two businesses sold items including kamameshi rice (岳の釜めし), and station sales of ekiben ended in October 2002. In March 2006 the Midori no Madoguchi ticket office closed, and a Moshi-Moshi ticket machine called Kaeru-kun was installed. Automatic ticket gates came into use on 22 March 2006. Suica became usable on 14 March 2009, for trips towards Takasaki only. On 1 November 2010 the departure melody was changed to Furusato Minakami, the town song of Minakami Town.
See all 17 dated events in the Data view →
Written by an AI from this station's own sourced facts (the dated events in the Data view), nothing else, and checked by a program for dates and numbers that are not in those facts. It can still be wrong. Found a mistake? . Adapted from Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0; this text is shared under the same licence.