Japan’s rural railways are disappearing

TUCKED AWAY in the verdant mountains of Shimane, in western Japan, Gobira railway station has nearly disappeared. Its signs have faded, the letters hardly legible. The tracks are blanketed in thick moss and overgrown with weeds. Its last departure was in the spring of 2018, when the 108km-long Sanko Line, which snaked through six municipalities in Shimane and Hiroshima prefectures, closed after 88 years. “It’s sad that the Sanko Line is gone,” a local reminisces. “When we were young, we would stretch our hands out of the train windows and touch the leaves of the mountain.”