Echigo Tokimeki Railway Nihongi Station

About Echigo Tokimeki Railway Nihongi Station

Echigo Tokimeki Railway Nihongi Station (えちごトキめき鉄道二本木駅) is a stop on the Myoko Haneuma Line in Itabashi, Nakago Ward, Joetsu City, Niigata Prefecture, where seven structures, led by a station building of 1910, were entered on the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on September 10, 2019. The station opened in 1911, and timetables still give it the sub-name "Nihongi (Nippon Soda-mae)" after the chemical works beside it.

The Myoko Haneuma Line is the former Shin'etsu Main Line between Naoetsu and Myoko-Kogen, now run by Echigo Tokimeki Railway. Nihongi sits partway up a steep climb at the foot of Mount Myoko, and according to the local Joetsu Town Journal it has had a switchback, a zigzag in which trains reverse direction, ever since it opened. The prefectural tourism site describes it as the only switchback station left in Niigata.

A ride report by the rail news site Norimono News describes what happens: a train coming up from the Joetsu-Myoko side leaves the main line into a siding under a long timber cover, stops, then reverses into the platforms laid out on level ground. The seven registered structures mix the equipment that makes this manoeuvre work with the everyday buildings of a station from the late Meiji to early Showa years.

Seven Registered Structures

All seven structures at Nihongi Station were registered on September 10, 2019, in the 93rd round of listings, under consecutive numbers 15-497 to 15-503. The station building and lamp shed qualified as buildings that have become a model of design; the other five as structures that contribute to the historic landscape of the country. Echigo Tokimeki Railway told Norimono News that this is the second-largest number of registered cultural properties inside a single station's grounds anywhere in Japan. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives the following dates and sizes.

• Station building: 1910, altered in the early Showa period and around 1991; single-storey timber, metal roof, building area 273 square meters
• Platform roof: 1937; steel frame, metal roof, area 262 square meters
• Platform waiting room: 1935; single-storey timber, metal roof, building area 35 square meters
• Underground passage and shelter: 1942; reinforced-concrete passage 28 meters long, with a single-storey timber shelter of 21 square meters
• Warehouse: 1910; single-storey timber, metal roof, building area 20 square meters
• Lamp shed: 1910; single-storey brick, tiled roof, building area 9.9 square meters
• Switchback line snow shed: 1922; steel frame, area 472 square meters

How the Station Is Laid Out

At Nihongi Station the station building stands on the east side of the yard, with an island platform to its west. An underground passage runs beneath the tracks in a U-shape to link the building with the north end of the platform, and the platform is covered by a roof carried on columns of old rail. The platform waiting room stands at the south end of that roof.

South of the station building, the warehouse and then the lamp shed stand in a row, both facing west. Those three structures of 1910, the station building, warehouse and lamp shed, show in one place what a station was made of when the line opened.

Only the snow shed stands apart. It is beside the main line south of the platform, about 550 meters from the station building by its registered coordinates, and covers the siding that trains run into during the switchback. It is 112 meters long.

Getting There and Visiting

From Joetsu-Myoko Station on the Hokuriku Shinkansen, change to the Myoko Haneuma Line; Nihongi is about 16 minutes away, or about 30 minutes from Naoetsu. Under the timetable revised on March 14, 2026, roughly 20 trains a day in each direction call at Nihongi, but many services terminate at Arai, so trains through the middle of the day run every 1 to 2 hours. By car, the station is about 10 minutes from the Nakago interchange on the Joshinetsu Expressway, and the prefectural tourism site lists free parking for about 30 cars.

There is no staffed ticket window, but the station has a ticket machine and toilets. The tourism site gives the local non-profit Nakago-ku Machizukuri Shinkokai as the station's contact. The Setsugekka sightseeing train also stops here on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. At the end of the platform a switchback viewing deck lets you watch trains at track level; it closes for the winter.

Rail users can see the station building, platform roof, platform waiting room and underground passage close up simply by catching a train. The snow shed sits on a working track and is normally off-limits. The member pages cover what to look for at each structure and the conditions for seeing it.