Niiya

History

Niiya Station opened on 1 May 1920 as a station of the privately built Ehime Railway, a 762 mm light-rail line from Wakamiya Junction (near present-day Iyo-Nagahama) to Uchiko. Nationalised on 1 October 1933 and re-gauged to 1,067 mm in October 1935, the station joined the Uchiko Line. When Japanese National Railways later built a new Uchiko branch of the Yosan Line, the track at Niiya was re-aligned and the station relocated; the new station reopened on 3 March 1986. JR Shikoku took control with the 1 April 1987 privatisation. The current station consists of two opposed side platforms with no internal crossing — passengers must use a level crossing some distance away to change platforms.

History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-06-09.

Where the English and Japanese sources differ, this account follows the Japanese source.

Notes

Manga artist Leiji Matsumoto spent his wartime childhood in the Niiya district and has said the clock tower of the old Niiya Station and the steam locomotives that passed it shaped the imagery of his later masterwork "Galaxy Express 999"; the street in front of the station is now called "999-dōri".