History
Akabira Station opened on 10 November 1913 as Kami-Akabira on what is now the Nemuro Main Line, in a region with three large coal mines — Toyosato (Shōwa Denkō), Akama (Hokutan) and Akabira (Sumitomo). The station was renamed Akabira on 15 June 1943. At the late-1950s peak the three colliery sidings produced nearly 200 loaded coal cars a day from the station, and in fiscal 1960 Akabira's freight tonnage briefly exceeded that of Umeda Station to top the country. As the mines closed in the 1960s-80s freight traffic faded; JR Hokkaido and JR Freight inherited the station at the 1 April 1987 privatisation, JR Freight withdrew on 1 April 1989, and the Midori-no-Madoguchi window closed on 25 March 2016.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.
Notes
In fiscal 1960 Akabira's freight dispatch tonnage briefly overtook that of Osaka's Umeda Station, putting this small coal-mining stop at the top of the entire Japanese network for one year.