Horonai Railway

The Horonai Railway (官営幌内鉄道, kan'ei Horonai tetsudō) was a Japanese government-managed railway which was among the first to be built in Hokkaidō. Established in 1869, it was sold off to the private sector twenty years later. Some of the infrastructure of the Horonai Railway remains in use today, as the Temiya Line and Muroran Main Line, connecting Minami-Otaru Station and Iwamizawa Station; these began operations in the 1880s.

The Hokkaidō Colonization Office was established in 1869, as the new Meiji government sought to take advantage of the natural resources of the island. The American engineer Horace Capron, invited to Hokkaidō by the government for this purpose, determined the presence of a sizable coal deposit in the upper reaches of the Horonai River. Another American engineer, Benjamin Smith Lyman, was invited to plan the establishment and operations of a new coal mine.

Capron suggested the construction of rails from Horonai to the port of Muroran, as part of a plan to ship the coal from there; meanwhile, Lyman's plan involved the construction of rails instead to Horomuibuto (today Ebetsu), and intended to use a system of river boats on the Ishikari River for shipping the coal to Otaru, where they could be transferred to a larger ship. The government decided Lyman's plan was cheaper, and in March 1878, they invited yet another American engineer, to begin land surveys in preparation for construction. Crawford quickly determined that much of the land, being swampy, was not suitable for rails, stations, or other buildings, and that the river would freeze over in winter, rendering this shipping plan feasible for only around 150 days each year. His suggestion to extend the rail lines from Horomui Futoshi to Otaru, and to build rails straight to the piers, was approved by the Settlement Envoy, Kuroda Kiyotaka.

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