Former Harumi Railway Bridge: Four Rails, No Trains

Freight

The bridge opened in 1957 on the Harumi Line, a freight line that crossed the canal from Toyosu to the wharves at Harumi. It was one of the city's port lines, and between them they carried coal, coke, salt, newsprint, rice, wheat and mandarin oranges.

For a freight line, it was a lot of bridge. The green arch in the middle was the first Lohse arch built for a railway in Japan, and the concrete spans on either side were the first of their design on a Japanese railway too.

The steel span was fabricated by Ishikawajima Heavy Industries, the company that became IHI. The dock of its old shipyard is a few minutes' walk from the Toyosu end.

Then freight moved onto the roads. The port lines closed one after another, and the Harumi Line, the last of them, went in 1989.

Off limits

There was talk of taking the bridge down. Partly for reasons of budget, a port official has said, it was closed off instead.

It was a railway bridge for just over thirty years. It was a closed one for more than thirty-six.

In those years it became one of Tokyo's favourite abandoned railways, partly because the road bridge alongside gives such a close view of it.

In September 2025, it reopened as a footpath, part of Harumi Bridge Park.

The deck

Turning it into a footpath was not a matter of laying boards over the old line. The rails came up, along with the sleepers and the stones beneath them. The bridge was repaired, and the rails went back into the new deck.

Here and there, the deck has windows in it.

From the water

From the waterside path at the Toyosu end, the arch turns out to be the showy part of a longer bridge, repainted in the green it wore when it was built. On either side of it, the bridge is grey concrete, standing on piers in the canal.