History
Shimosone Station is a JR Kyushu station on the Nippō Main Line in Kokuraminami-ku, Kitakyushu, 11.6 km from the line's start at Kokura. The Kyushu Railway opened it as Sone Station (曽根駅) on 25 October 1895; the railway was nationalized in 1907, and the station was renamed Shimosone on 1 May 1945. On 4 May 1946 the depot was devastated by an explosion at an adjacent former Imperial Japanese Army Air Service ammunition dump. The current bridge-style station building opened on 28 April 1981, and JR Kyushu inherited the station at privatization on 1 April 1987. Since 1 July 2023 northbound rapid services have stopped at the station, and direct JR Kyushu operation resumed on 1 October 2023.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
On 4 May 1946 an ammunition dump 1.4 km from Shimosone exploded for nearly a full day; the station's windows were shattered and its walls partly collapsed, but every passenger and freight train was successfully evacuated before the explosions reached the rails, leaving no casualties on station property itself.