History
Kinugawa-Onsen Station opened on 1919-03-17 as Shimotaki Station on the narrow-gauge Shimotsuke Tramway. The line was renamed the Shimotsuke Electric Railway in June 1921, and on 1922-03-19 the station was relocated and renamed Otaki; it took its present name on 1927-02-19. Tobu Railway absorbed the Shimotsuke Electric Railway on 1943-05-01, making this a Tobu station. The current station, about 1.2 km closer to Shimo-Imaichi than the previous site, opened on 1964-10-08. Tobu began through services from JR's Shinjuku as the (Spacia) Kinugawa on 2006-03-18, and steam-hauled SL Taiju tourist trains have run between Shimo-Imaichi and Kinugawa-Onsen since 2017-08-10.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
To turn the steam locomotive used on the SL Taiju tourist train, a turntable relocated from JR West's Miyoshi Station was installed beside platform 1, next to the station forecourt.