Odakyu Electric Railway

Encyclopedia : O : OD : ODA : Odakyu Electric Railway

Near Higashi-Kitazawa Station

The , or OER, is a major private railway company in Tokyo, Japan, best known for its Romancecar series of limited express trains from Tokyo to Odawara, Enoshima, and Hakone. The Odakyu Group comprises of 108 companies (as of October 2005), and includes Enoshima Electric Railway, Hakone-Tozan Line, Tachikawa Bus and Tokai Bus.

Contents

1 History
2 Lines
3 Odakyu railway on the computer
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

History

The 83 km line from Shinjuku to Odawara opened for service on April 1, 1927.

The original full name of the railroad was Odawara Kyūkō Denki Kidō Kabushiki-gaisha, but this was often shortened to Odawara Kyūkō (Odawara Express). The abbreviation Odakyū was made popular by the title song of the 1929 movie Tokyo Kōshinkyoku and eventually became the official name of the railroad (Seidensticker, 1990).

On May 1, 1942, Odakyu merged with the Tokyo-Yokohama Electric Railway company (now Tokyu), which controlled all private railway services west and south of Tokyo by the end of World War II. The company regained its independence on June 1, 1948.

Today, Odakyu is a diversified corporation with operations in real estate, finance (credit card), fiber optic networking, personal storage, and travel sales, railways, bus service. They also own several recreational facilities, including a golf course, campground, hot springs resort, and sailing resort, all of which are situated to bring more passengers onto the railway network.

The Odakyu group have department stores by Shin-Yurigaoka, Shinjuku, Machida and Fujisawa stations.　Odakyu also runs a number of large hotels, including Odakyu Southern Tower in Yoyogi, as well as others in Shinjuku and Izu Peninsula. They also own a chain of supermarkets called Odakyu OX across west Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture, as well as a chain of convenience stores (Odakyu MART) and kiosk outlets (OX SHOP) found in various Odakyu line stations. Odakyu, like many railway companies in Japan, also operate a set of feeder busses all throughout the line that compliment city bus services, called Odakyu Bus.

Odakyu is listed on Section 1 of Tokyo Stock Exchange, and is a company on Fortune magazine's Global 500 list.

In the last five years, Odakyu has been adding track in both directions from the Tokyo border to Shimokitazawa Station to expand express train service.

Lines

Odakyu Enoshima Line (Sagami-Ono Station - Katase-Enoshima Station)
Odakyu Odawara Line (Shinjuku Station - Odawara Station)
Odakyu Tama Line (Shin-Yurigaoka Station - Karakida Station)

Some Odakyu trains from the Tama Line continue on to the Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line Yoyogi-Uehara Station.
Some Odakyu trains continue on to the Hakone-Tozan Line (Odawara Station - Hakone-Yumoto Station)

Odakyu railway on the computer

The Odakyu Railway has been included in several Japanese language train simulator programs as well as the English language Microsoft Train Simulator program. Microsoft Train Simulator includes the railway's Odawara and Hakone-Tozan lines, collectively referred to as the "Tokyo-Hakone" route. You can drive 2 of the trains that travel on the line; the Series 2000 commuter trainset and the Series 7000 LSE Romance　Car trainset. Several "activities", or scenarios, are included.

References

Seidensticker, Edward (1990). Tokyo Rising : the city since the great earthquake. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ISBN 0-394-54360-2.

External links