Shintetsu Sanda Line

The line is one piece of the Shintetsu network, which grew out of the Kōbe Arima Electric Railway, a company established on 27 March 1926 to drive a railway from central Kobe up into the mountains toward the hot-spring resort of Arima. That parent line, the Arima Line, opened on 28 November 1928 between Minatogawa and Arima-Onsen, and the Sanda Line was conceived as a branch carrying the same mountain railway onward from the Arima junction toward Sanda, where it could meet the national railways' Fukuchiyama Line.

The Sanda Line's own origins go back to a railway licence granted on 2 June 1927 for a line between Arima-machi and Miwa village in Arima District. Construction followed, and on 18 December 1928 — only three weeks after the Arima Line opened — the section between Karakute Station (today's Arima-guchi) and Sanda Station opened to traffic, completing the through route from the Kobe hills down to Sanda. An intermediate station, Sanda-honmachi, was added on 10 October 1929.

Like the rest of the Shintetsu system, the Sanda Line is fundamentally a mountain railway, and its engineering reflects that: the alignment climbs and falls on grades as steep as 33.3 per mille as it threads the hilly country between Arima-guchi and Sanda. The line was built and has always been worked under electric power at 1,500 V DC, the traction system the company adopted from the outset to haul trains up the steep ruling grades that conventional adhesion working could manage only with continuous electric power.

The early decades brought a series of station renamings that track the line's evolving identity. The Kobe terminus, Karakute, was renamed Arima-Onsen-guchi on 20 March 1951 and then Arima-guchi on 1 September 1954, while Yokoyama Station became Dentetsu-Yokoyama on 1 October 1952. These changes accompanied the company's own renaming to Kobe Electric Railway (神戸電気鉄道) on 30 April 1949, the corporate identity under which the line still operates today.

From the late twentieth century the Sanda Line was progressively upgraded for heavier commuter traffic as Kobe's northern suburbs filled in. The single-track line was doubled section by section: the Yokoyama–Sanda stretch was duplicated on 24 March 1991 and the Okaba–Taoji stretch on 20 March 1998, raising capacity along the busiest part of the route. A new express category, the Special Rapid (特快速), was added to the timetable on 26 November 1995 to speed commuters between Sanda and Kobe.

Today the Sanda Line functions as a busy commuter feeder. Many of its trains run through onto the Arima Line at Arima-guchi and continue toward central Kobe, so that passengers from Sanda reach the city without changing, while at Sanda Station the line connects with JR West's Fukuchiyama Line (the JR Takarazuka Line) for onward travel toward Osaka. In a final modernising touch, the company abolished the smoking corners at every Sanda Line station and made the stations entirely non-smoking on 1 March 2011.

• 192627 March: the Kōbe Arima Electric Railway, the company that would become Kobe Electric Railway (Shintetsu), is established to build a railway from Kobe toward Arima.
• 19272 June: a railway licence is granted for a line between Arima-machi and Miwa village in Arima District — the future Sanda Line.
• 192828 November: the parent Arima Line opens between Minatogawa and Arima-Onsen, inaugurating the Shintetsu network.
• 192818 December: the Sanda Line opens between Karakute (now Arima-guchi) and Sanda, three weeks after the Arima Line.
• 192910 October: Sanda-honmachi Station opens as an intermediate station on the line.
• 194930 April: the company is renamed Kobe Electric Railway (神戸電気鉄道), the corporate name under which the line still operates.
• 195120 March: Karakute Station is renamed Arima-Onsen-guchi Station.
• 19521 October: Yokoyama Station is renamed Dentetsu-Yokoyama Station.
• 19541 September: Arima-Onsen-guchi Station is renamed Arima-guchi Station, the line's present northern terminus name.
• 199124 March: the Yokoyama–Sanda section is double-tracked.
• 199526 November: a new express category, the Special Rapid (特快速), is added to the timetable.
• 199820 March: the Okaba–Taoji section is double-tracked.
• 20111 March: smoking corners are abolished and every Sanda Line station is made entirely non-smoking.