History
Kuroiso Station opened on 1 December 1886 as a Nippon Railway station in what is now Nasushiobara, Tochigi. It came under the Japanese Government Railways with the nationalisation of Nippon Railway on 1 November 1906 and into JNR ownership in June 1949. The Tōhoku Main Line was electrified to Kuroiso at 1.5 kV DC on 22 May 1959, and the section north to Shiroishi at 20 kV 50 Hz AC on 1 July 1959, leaving an AC/DC neutral section inside the station. The dead section was relocated to a bridge north of the platforms on 1 January 2018, after a 2008 fatality and a 2013 conversion of the station's overhead wiring to DC.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Kuroiso is the boundary between DC-electrified suburban Utsunomiya Line services and AC-electrified Tōhoku Main Line trains to Sendai and Morioka; trains running through used to lower pantographs, and electric locomotives were swapped out at the station.