Hanazono Line

The line is laid to 1,067 mm gauge and is double-tracked and electrified at 600 V DC by overhead wire throughout its entire length. It takes its name from Hanazonochō-dōri, the shopping street that runs alongside the tracks between the two stops. At its northern end, the Matsuyama City Station stop sits beside the terminus of Iyotetsu's suburban Takahama, Yokogawara and Gunchū lines, allowing tram passengers to interchange with the company's heavy-rail network; at the southern end the Minami-Horibata stop connects with the Jōnan Line, feeding traffic into the wider tram loop around central Matsuyama.

Although it is barely longer than a single city block, the Hanazono Line carries a busy mix of services. Four numbered tram routes use it, together with the Botchan Ressha, a heritage train styled after the steam locomotives that once worked the network. Every service that runs on the line begins and ends at the Matsuyama City Station stop, making that stop the line's operational anchor and a gateway between Iyotetsu's tram and railway operations.

Two of those services, Routes 1 and 2, are the network's loop services, circling central Matsuyama in opposite directions by way of JR Matsuyama Station, Kiyamachi, Teppōchō and Ōkaidō. Loop operation on the Matsuyama city tram network began on 1 December 1969, and the Hanazono Line forms part of the circuit those trains follow. Route 3, by contrast, links Matsuyama City Station with the famous Dōgo Onsen hot-spring terminus, so the short line also feeds one of the city's best-known tourist corridors.

The Hanazono Line opened on 25 March 1947, in the years immediately after the Second World War, extending Iyotetsu's tram network the short distance between Matsuyama City Station and Minami-Horibata. From the outset it served less as a route in its own right than as a connector, stitching the railway terminus into the surrounding grid of city tram lines and giving through services a path between the station forecourt and the central loop.

For most of its history the line's two stops and short alignment changed little, but the pattern of services over it has been adjusted to improve access to the station. On 1 March 2018 Iyotetsu rerouted its Route 6 service, which had previously started and terminated at Dōgo Onsen, to begin and end at Matsuyama City Station instead, sending it over the Hanazono Line; the change was made to improve access to the city-centre station and was announced in a company press release. Today the Hanazono Line remains a compact but heavily used hinge in Matsuyama's tram system, linking Iyotetsu's heavy rail, its loop services and its hot-spring route at a single central junction.

• 194725 March: the Hanazono Line opens, extending Iyo Railway's Matsuyama tram network the short distance between the Matsuyama City Station stop and Minami-Horibata.
• 19691 December: loop (circular) operation begins on the Matsuyama city tram network; the Hanazono Line forms part of the circuit followed by the loop services that run over it (Routes 1 and 2).
• 20181 March: Iyo Railway reroutes its Route 6 service, previously starting and terminating at Dōgo Onsen, to start and end at Matsuyama City Station instead, sending it over the Hanazono Line; the change, announced in a company press release, was made to improve access to the city-centre station.