Meitetsu Hashima Line

The line was built to connect the Shinkansen's Gifu-Hashima Station with the Gifu city area, which had no JR (or, earlier, Japanese National Railways) conventional line or other private railway serving the Shinkansen station directly. There was also a competitive motive: the project was partly a response to plans by Kinki Nippon Railway (Kintetsu) to push into the Hashima and Gifu area. In 1961 Kintetsu announced a new line linking Ōgaki with Gifu-Hashima Station, derived from its scheme to extend the Yōrō Line toward Gifu, and looked ahead to a possible further extension into the city of Gifu itself.

Meitetsu, for its part, had been envisaging a monorail to connect Gifu city with Hashima, Ōgaki and Yōrō, and on detecting Kintetsu's move it pressed ahead with concrete plans. Separately from the monorail, a conventional-rail connection running from Egira Station on the Takehana Line — then a suspended station — to Gifu-Hashima was planned under the name "Hashima New Line," and a licence was obtained in May 1963. Kintetsu's own application was shelved once the Hashima New Line was authorised, and a competing Gifu city monorail plan was frozen in 1975, leaving the Hashima New Line as the sole route between Gifu-Hashima Station and the Gifu city area.

Construction was originally meant to be completed in time for the 1964 opening of Gifu-Hashima Station, but development planned along the route in step with the new station meant that Meitetsu's land acquisition collided with the local authorities' land-readjustment work, and negotiations proved difficult. Meitetsu was also advancing several other projects at the same time — the Toyota New Line, the Chita New Line and the upgrading of the Seto Line for through-running into central Nagoya — and the Hashima New Line, a lower priority by comparison, kept slipping.

In the end the line was begun twelve years after the licence was granted and took seven years to build. Construction started in December 1975, although full-scale work did not get under way until March 1978 because of the difficulty of acquiring land, and the line finally opened on 11 December 1982. Its official name was the Hashima Line from the opening, but for some time afterwards it continued to be referred to as the Hashima New Line. Because a surcharge applies to the newly built line, a small extra fare is charged on top of the distance-based fare.

In service the Hashima Line is operated entirely in conjunction with the Takehana Line, with trains running between Kasamatsu and Shin-Hashima at roughly thirty-minute intervals (three per hour in the morning and evening peaks). Originally there were trains that ran through to the Nagoya Main Line, but the through service to Meitetsu Gifu later dwindled to a handful of morning departures, and passengers generally change at Kasamatsu. After the section of the Takehana Line south of Egira was closed in 2001, the old junction was eliminated and almost all Takehana Line trains came to run through onto the Hashima Line. Both Egira and Shin-Hashima are unstaffed stations with no passing facilities; the line climbs onto a viaduct just after Egira and runs elevated all the way to Shin-Hashima, so level crossings exist only near Egira.

Several changes have followed since the opening. On 3 January 2002 a train-collision accident occurred at Shin-Hashima Station. From 29 January 2005 the service frequency was increased from two to four trains per hour, and on 14 December 2007 the Tranpass prepaid card system was introduced. On 1 April 2019 Shin-Hashima Station was made barrier-free with the installation of an elevator and an accessible toilet. Although the line was conceived as a Shinkansen access route, Gifu-Hashima is bypassed by Nozomi services and has relatively few trains, so the Hashima Line is said to be used more by local commuters and students than by Shinkansen passengers.

• 1962January: Meitetsu issues the directive to plan construction of the Hashima New Line.
• 1963May: Meitetsu obtains the railway licence for the Hashima New Line.
• 1975December: construction begins; a competing Gifu city monorail plan is frozen the same year.
• 1978March: full-scale construction work finally gets under way after protracted land acquisition.
• 198211 December: the Hashima Line opens between Egira and Shin-Hashima (completed in October 1982).
• 20023 January: a train-collision accident occurs at Shin-Hashima Station.
• 200529 January: service frequency is increased from two to four trains per hour.
• 200714 December: the Tranpass prepaid card system is introduced.
• 20191 April: Shin-Hashima Station is made barrier-free with an elevator and an accessible toilet.