Facility to Preserve Crashed JR West Train Completed

Newsfrom Japan

Society

Dec 18, 2025 16:31 (JST)

Suita, Osaka Pref., Dec. 18 (Jiji Press)–West Japan Railway Co., or JR West, showed to the press Wednesday its recently completed facility to preserve its train that crashed in April 2005 to kill 106 passengers and the train’s driver.

JR West has begun to allow bereaved relatives and people injured in the accident to tour the facility, which was completed Friday last week.

The facility, sitting next to JR West’s employee training center in the city of Suita, Osaka Prefecture, western Japan, will not be opened to the general public in principle as opinions are divided among the bereaved families and surviving victims.

In the accident, a seven-car JR West train derailed and crashed while traveling on a curve of the Fukuchiyama Line in the city of Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, an Osaka neighbor, at a speed far exceeding the limit for the section.

The one-story facility with one basement floor has a floor space of some 3,900 square meters in total, with all seven cars of the train exhibited on the first floor. The firm recreated the accident site on the basement floor by relocating rails and railroad ties from the site.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]

Jiji Press