History
Niwasaka Station opened on 15 May 1899 as part of the Ōu Nansen line between Fukushima and Yonezawa, and from the outset served as a base for the helper locomotives that pushed trains over Itaya Pass. Goods traffic ended in 1978, parcel handling in 1984, and on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR East at the privatisation of Japanese National Railways. Simple-commission ticketing was withdrawn in 1993, leaving the station fully unattended. The original wooden building was demolished in January 2003 and the present, smaller second-generation structure was completed that March; the line was re-gauged to standard gauge between 1988 and 1992 to accommodate the Yamagata Shinkansen.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Niwasaka was historically the foothill base for helper locomotives that pushed steam trains up the Itaya Pass; a brick lamp shed from that era still stands at the Fukushima end of platform 1, and the surrounding houses fan outwards in a wedge because they were built on the cleared site of the old roundhouse and turntable.