Former Kubiki Railway

Two Buildings from a Light Railway

The Former Kubiki Railway site lies at 257-17 Nibanwari, Hyakkenmachi, Kubiki ward, Joetsu City, Niigata Prefecture, where 2 buildings were entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 7 August 2023. They are registered properties rather than designated ones. The older, the locomotive shed, was built in 1914.

The 2 are the locomotive shed and the former headquarters. They belong to a transport company.

Of the headquarters, the Agency records that it was the office building of a light railway company whose line crossed the plain from east to west. A light railway runs on a narrower gauge than a main line.

The Present Use Written into the Name

Each property carries two names, one in brackets after the other.

The shed is recorded as the Former Kubiki Railway Locomotive Shed, with a rolling stock exhibition hall named in brackets.

The headquarters is recorded as the Former Kubiki Railway Headquarters, with a light railway museum named in brackets.

What stands before the brackets is the use for which each was built; what stands inside is the use it serves now. The shed has become a hall for showing rolling stock, the office a museum of the railway.

The former Gakushuin hall and the former Shuseikan factory carry only the word former. At the Kannonshoji fuda hall, what it once held is set down in the commentary.

Here the name field itself sets the earlier use beside the present one. That a railway building became a museum is kept in its name.

Registered in 2023, the Most Recent Met Here

These went on the register later than any property covered here.

Both carry the registration date 7 August 2023.

The 7 buildings at Kannonshoji were registered in 2021, the 3 stations of the Kinosaki ropeway in 2017, and the 4 buildings of the Furukawa residence in 2007.

The 6 at Shotokukan and the 3 at Takanawaso were registered in 2000.

These are later than all of them: the works of a railway long closed have come to be treated as cultural property only in recent years.

Of the shed, the Agency closes that it keeps the history of the light railway within the district. The line itself is gone; the buildings remain.

Western Technique in Each of the Two

Both are timber, and both use ways of building that came from the West.

Of the shed, the Agency records a king post truss in the roof: a triangular frame with a single post at its centre, a Western form of roof structure.

Of the headquarters, that its brackets take up the Secession manner, and that it is a Western-style building standing as a landmark for the district.

The Secession was a movement in the Vienna of the late nineteenth century. The brackets in question carry the eaves.

At the Shotokukan main house, the interiors blend Japanese and Western design; at Takanawaso, a Japanese building stands beside a Western one. There the two divide by building or by room.

Here the Western element enters at different points: the frame in one, the ornament in the other. The outer walls are of weatherboard, the eaves painted.

Two Buildings of Unlike Size and Height

On one site, the two differ in what they were for.

The shed is timber, single-storeyed, tiled, covering 306 square metres, and runs about 40 metres from east to west.

The headquarters is timber, 2-storeyed, tiled, covering 91 square metres.

The shed is more than 3 times the office. Built to hold rolling stock, it runs long and low.

Their dates differ too: the shed is Taisho, 1914, and the headquarters early Showa, 1942, twenty-eight years apart.

The line came first and the company's office followed. The shed stands at about the mid-point of the route.

Visiting

The site is at 257-17 Nibanwari, Hyakkenmachi, Kubiki ward, Joetsu City, Niigata Prefecture, owned by a transport company.

The shed carries a row of long windows on its south face with clerestory windows above for light. At the east end, where the rolling stock passed in and out, doors once hung and the arched frame remains.

The headquarters gathers a draught lobby and its stairs into a projecting bay, and the boarded dado inside keeps the feeling of the prewar Showa years.

Both now serve as museums, as their names record.

Opening and hours follow the operator's arrangements. Check before travelling.