The Kyushu Railway Company (九州旅客鉄道株式会社, Kyūshū Ryokaku Tetsudō Kabushiki-gaisha?), also referred to as JR Kyushu (JR九州, Jeiāru Kyūshū?), is one of the constituent companies of Japan Railways Group (JR Group). It operates intercity rail services in Kyushu, Japan and the JR Kyushu Jet Ferry Beetle hydrofoil service across the Tsushima Strait between Fukuoka and Busan, South Korea.
When Japan Railways was divided in 1987, Kyushu Railway Company was in deficit under recession of Japanese steel industry and competition from highways and air flights. Yet the company then diversified its business, especially in developing and commercializing its properties (such as train stations).
JR Kyushu's headquarters are in Hakata-ku, Fukuoka.
The company introduced SUGOCA, a smart card ticketing system, from March 1, 2009.
Read more about Kyushu Railway Company: Limited Express and Tourist Train Services
Famous quotes containing the words railway and/or company:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
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“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)