History
Niitsu Station opened on 20 November 1897 with the Hokuetsu Railway's extension from Nuttari to Higashi-Sanjō, becoming a junction over the next fifteen years as the lines that became the Banetsu West Line (1910) and the Uetsu Main Line (1912 to Shibata) branched from here. Nationalised in August 1907, Niitsu hosted a major motive-power depot from 1913 and was the regional rail hub of the lower Echigo plain. JR East and JR Freight took over on 1 April 1987. A footbridge concourse and the present third-generation elevated station building entered service on 6 December 2003, while the east-west free passage opened on 16 May 2001. The station was relaunched as an "Ecoste" model station in April 2017.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
On the southbound Twilight Express sleeper from Osaka to Sapporo, Niitsu was once the last Honshu stop: the train's next call was Tōya in Hokkaidō, a non-stop run that was the longest of any JR passenger service in both distance and time.