Former Japan National Railways Nekita Line Koshikawa Bridge

One Railway Bridge, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property since 1998

Former Japan National Railways Nekita Line Koshikawa Bridge (旧国鉄根北線越川橋梁) stands at 245-8 Koshikawa and adjoining lots, Shari Town, Shari District, Hokkaido, a Showa-period railway bridge entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 23 July 1998. It is a registered property rather than a designated one.

The quantity is one structure. The owner is Shari Town.

The structure is a concrete bridge of 10 arches, 147 metres long and 21.7 metres high. The date field reads early Showa and the year field 1940.

No Train Ever Crossed It

Built for a railway, it was never used by one.

The Agency records that it was built as part of a line to join two districts of eastern Hokkaido, but that the line was never completed. Such a line is one begun but never opened.

The town museum records that work began in 1938 and the bridge was finished in 1940, but that railway construction stopped that same year, and the bridge passed into the post-war years unused, as it remains today.

Hayabusa Station was registered as a station where trains still stop. The Kubiki Railway locomotive shed served a line that did run.

Here work stopped in the year the bridge was finished, and the track never reached it. The word former in the name is attached to a line that never ran.

The museum also records that the work was done under harsh forced labour, handed down together with records of those who died.

Two Piers Lost to a Road

Part of the bridge was taken away before it was registered.

The Agency records that 2 piers were removed in 1973 in the course of work on a national highway.

Registration came in 1998, 25 years after the removal. Recorded as a bridge of 10 arches, it already lacked 2 piers when it was entered.

The Obaraya Harada shop storehouse was drawn back in 1960 to widen a road, moved whole.

Here the middle of the bridge was cut away for the road. For roads, one building was moved and the other cut.

The museum says the bridge blends into the riverside woods and its surroundings and keeps a fine form to this day.

A Common Name Rather Than the Proper One

The name registered and the bridge's own name differ.

The town museum records that in 1940 the First Ikushinagawa Bridge, commonly called the Koshikawa Bridge, was completed in the Koshikawa district.

Its proper name is the First Ikushinagawa Bridge; registration uses the common name. Koshikawa is the name of the district where it stands.

The reading of the line's name varies too: the national database gives Konboku, the museum Konpoku, and the English name in the database Nekita.

At the Ogiwara residence, the character and the reading of the name do not match.

Here the name itself is a common one, and the reading of the line's name shifts from source to source.

Visiting

The bridge stands at 245-8 Koshikawa and adjoining lots, Shari Town, Shari District, Hokkaido, owned by the town.

The Agency calls it a 10-arch bridge of plain concrete, 147 metres long and 21.7 metres high, the largest concrete railway bridge in Hokkaido. Plain concrete is concrete laid without reinforcing steel.

The museum notes that the wartime construction without reinforcing bars is a feature in itself, and that the bridge conveys the civil engineering of its day.

The unit of quantity is the one used for civil-engineering structures, as at the Misaka tunnel.

It is an open-air structure beside a highway, so whether and how it may be visited follows the owner's arrangements. Check before travelling.