Niwasaka

No publicly available departure data for this station.

Niwasaka Station opened on 15 May 1899 as part of the Ōu Nansen line between Fukushima and Yonezawa, and from the outset served as a base for the helper locomotives that pushed trains over Itaya Pass. Goods traffic ended in 1978, parcel handling in 1984, and on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR East at the privatisation of Japanese National Railways. Simple-commission ticketing was withdrawn in 1993, leaving the station fully unattended. The original wooden building was demolished in January 2003 and the present, smaller second-generation structure was completed that March; the line was re-gauged to standard gauge between 1988 and 1992 to accommodate the Yamagata Shinkansen.

Niwasaka was historically the foothill base for helper locomotives that pushed steam trains up the Itaya Pass; a brick lamp shed from that era still stands at the Fukushima end of platform 1, and the surrounding houses fan outwards in a wedge because they were built on the cleared site of the old roundhouse and turntable.