History
Sawando Station opened on 27 December 1913 along the Ina Electric Tramway (renamed Ina Electric Railway in 1919), serving the section that extended to what is now Ina City, Nagano Prefecture. The Ina Electric Railway was nationalised on 1 August 1943 and the line absorbed into the Iida Line. With the breakup of Japanese National Railways on 1 April 1987, the station was transferred to Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) and JR Freight. The station was made unstaffed on 1 April 2013, and a replacement station building was completed in February 2020.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
About one kilometre south of the station, the Iida Line crosses what is recorded as the steepest grade on the JR network, at 40 per mille.