Usui Third Bridge

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

Usui PassMegane Bridgeabandoned railwaybrick viaductAnnaka

Photo: TANAKA Juuyoh (田中十洋) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) · original

What sets Usui Third Bridge apart from other natural sites in Gunma is how much depends on conditions outside anyone's control.

The Usui Third Bridge is a four-arch brick viaduct finished in 1892, 91 metres long and 31 metres high, and it is the largest brick bridge in Japan. It carried the rack railway over the Usui Pass — the notoriously steep section between Yokokawa and Karuizawa that needed a toothed third rail to climb — until the line was abandoned when the Shinkansen opened. It was designated an Important Cultural Property in 1993.

What makes it unusual to visit is that the abandoned railbed has been made into a footpath, the Apt no Michi, so you do not look at the bridge from below: you walk the trackbed through a sequence of nineteenth-century brick tunnels and out onto the deck of the viaduct itself. The tunnels are lit, the gradient is the railway's own, and the whole thing runs roughly an hour on foot up from Yokokawa Station. Almost every visitor here is Japanese, and most of them are railway people.

Plan your visit

Time to allow

2–3 hours round trip on foot from Yokokawa Station | 30–45 minutes if driving to the bridge

Hours

Trail and bridge open 24 hrs | Tunnel lighting 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Closed: Open year-round

Best time to visit

Late October–November for autumn colour | April–May for fresh green

Entry fee

Free | Free parking (26 spaces)

Getting there

Getting there in detail

Sakamoto, Matsuida-machi, Annaka. About an hour on foot from JR Yokokawa Station along the Apt no Michi trail, or drive to the bridge and park below it. Free to walk, open at all times; tunnel lighting operates 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM. Free parking for 26 vehicles (22 cars, 4 coaches).

Local knowledge

**Go up on foot, not by car, if you can.** The point of the place is the trackbed — the tunnels, the gradient, the sudden opening onto the deck. Driving straight to the bridge gets you the structure without the approach. The walk from Yokokawa Station is about an hour one way on a graded former railway, so it climbs steadily but never steeply. **Tunnel lighting sets your window.** The tunnels are lit only between 7:00 AM and 6:00 PM. They are long, curved and genuinely dark, so outside those hours you need your own torch. Plan the walk to finish inside the lit window. **Eat the kamameshi at the bottom.** Yokokawa Station is the home of the Toge-no-Kamameshi ceramic-pot bento, sold beside the station since the days when trains stopped here to attach the pusher locomotives. Buying one before the walk is what people from Gunma actually do. **November is the crowded month.** Autumn colour on the Usui valley draws day-trippers from Tokyo and the small car park below the bridge fills by mid-morning on weekends. Weekday mornings in any season are quiet. **Carry on above the bridge.** The trail continues past the viaduct toward the old Kumanotaira signal station. Most visitors turn round on the deck; the section beyond is emptier and still on the original railbed.

View on Google Maps