Oku-Tama Station (奥多摩駅) is a ground-level station in Okutama, Tokyo. JR East runs it on the Ōme Line. It opened on 1 July 1944 as Hikawa Station (氷川駅).
History
The station opened on 1 July 1944 as Hikawa Station (氷川駅), when the Ōme Line was extended from Mitake to here. It was an ordinary station. On 16 December 1952 the Tokyo Waterworks Bureau opened a private line, the Ogouchi Line (小河内線), to carry materials for building the Ogouchi Dam (小河内ダム). The line stopped running on 10 May 1957, when the dam was nearly finished. The line was not removed. Its owners later included Seibu Railway, from 1963, and Okutama Kogyo.
On 1 February 1971 the national railway station was renamed Oku-Tama Station, and direct trains to Tokyo Station on the Chūō Line were added. On 1 February 1984 luggage handling ended. On 1 April 1987 the station became a station of JR East and Japan Freight Railway (JR Freight).
On 14 October 1997 the station was chosen for the Kanto Stations Selection (関東の駅百選). The reason given was its lodge-style mountain hut design, which suits natural Okutama. In 1998 a private line carried limestone from a Okutama Kogyo loading facility. The last of these trains went to a cement plant at Hamakawasaki Station (浜川崎駅). The last freight train ran on 13 August 1998. On 25 March 1999 the JR Freight station closed and freight handling ended.
On 8 February 2002 Suica became usable. On 21 April 2006 the Okutama Station Gallery opened, and the departure melody became the children's song Donguri Korokoro (どんぐりころころ).
On 1 July 2018 the station was handed to a contractor to run. On 13 April 2019 the station building was renovated. On 18 March 2023 one-person train operation began between Ome and Okutama. A timetable change that day ended the through trains beyond Ome, so there were no more direct trains to Tachikawa or Tokyo Station. On 15 March 2025 JR East took direct control of the station.
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.