History
Moshiri Station (number T24) is on the JR Hokkaido Nemuro Main Line in Akabira, Hokkaido. It opened on 28 December 1918 as a freight-only station of the Railway Board, on the same day that the Mojiri coal-mine spur entered trial operation — the station was funded by the Ōkura-Gumi-derived Ōkura Mining Co. to ship coal from the Mojiri mine — and was promoted to a full passenger station on 15 July 1926. Akabira, in the central Sorachi area of the Sorachi Subprefecture, was once a major coal-mining centre with a 1960 peak population of 59,430; per the city's Wikipedia article the decline of the coal industry has cut that figure sharply, and Akabira has been rebuilding its economy around tourism that makes use of its preserved zuri-yama waste mounds and pithead structures as coal-mining heritage.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-25.
Notes
A grim chapter in the city's railway history is recorded in the Akabira article: on 1 November 1955 a gas explosion at the Mojiri coal-mine — the same colliery the station had been built to serve — killed 71 workers, and another gas explosion at the Yūbetsu Mojiri mine on 2 April 1969 killed 19 and triggered the mine's eventual closure.