History
The line was originally built and operated by the Naniwa Railway (浪速鉄道, Naniwa Tetsudō?) between Katamachi and Shijōnawate in 1895. Two years later, the Kansai Railway bought the line in order to have its own trunk line to Osaka from Nagoya, together with constructing by itself between Shijōnawate and Kizu. Katamachi was inextendably narrow, thus Amijima terminus was made. But Kansai Railway bought the Osaka Railway (I, ja) line from Nara via Ōji to Minatomachi (present JR Namba) in downtown Osaka, shifted the main line from ex-Naniwa Railway line. Afterwards, the subject line has been a branch of the railway network of Osaka.
Though in 1932 the section between Katamachi and Shijōnawate became the first electrified then Japan Governmental Railways line in Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto area and later in 1950 extended to Nagao, the improvement of facility and service was long forgotten. Only after privatization of the then Japanese National Railways (JNR), here the network was taken over by West Japan Railway Company (JR West), electrification in 1989 and gradual operational advancement have been made.
In 1997, JR Tōzai Line was opened and connected to Katamachi Line at Kyōbashi, and Katamachi Station was abandoned (with Ōsakajō-kitazume Station being a replacement for ridership). Most trains began operated through to Fukuchiyama Line (JR Takarazuka Line).
Conversion from a freight branch of the line to a passenger route, Osaka Higashi Line began service in 2008. Trains from Nara via Kansai Main (Yamatoji) Line are operated to Amagasaki Station.
Read more about this topic: Gakkentoshi Line
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)