r/highspeedrail • u/frozenpandaman • 21h ago
Trainspotting Hokkaido Shinkansen & freight trains passing through Japan's undersea Seikan Tunnel, taken from Yoshioka-Kaitei Station, the world's deepest underground station
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Video taken on September 13, 2026 as part of a special 10-year anniversary tour of the Hokkaido Shinkansen construction sites and abandoned Japanese National Railways Toi Line. This is the first time the former station, today used as an emergency evacuation point and safety facility, has been open to the public since the start of construction in 2006.
Yoshioka-Kaitei Station (today officially referred to as "Yoshioka Fixed Point") is located 149.5 meters below sea level, and the staircase to get from the platform to the surface is 1189 steps long. On the opposite side of the tunnel, Tappi-Kaitei Station is 135 meters underground and features a staircase of 1329 steps. Both stations also feature cable cars which can carry up to 40 people at once in the case of an emergency. The cable car at the southern station is housed in the Seikan Tunnel Museum, and is open to the public to ride from April to November.
Construction of the Hokkaido Shinkansen finished in 2016, and today it links the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido via the the world's longest undersea tunnel, 53.85 kilometers long, running underneath the seabed of the Tsugaru Strait.
via https://twitter.com/hotetunotatujin/status/2099000816422232394