In what sense has a train station been 3D printed in Japan?

In Japan, the structural framework of a new railway station was recently assembled in just under six hours—an incredibly short time in the construction field. According to West Japan Railway, it is the world's first railway station built with 3D-printed components. The company stated that building the station using conventional methods would have taken over two months and incurred significantly higher costs. The intervention involved Hatsushima Station, located in the small town of Arida—in the central-western part of Japan. The structure’s components were printed at a plant about 800 kilometers away. The printing and reinforcement of the modules took a total of seven days. Assembly was then carried out overnight, during the six hours between the departure of the last evening train and the arrival of the first morning train. The relatively low rail traffic in the area undoubtedly helped to make the work more efficient. Ryo Kawamoto, head of the innovation division at West Japan Railway, told the New York Times that one of the project’s main strengths was the ability to significantly reduce the workforce needed for this type of work by leveraging 3D printing.

The project could become a reference point for other contexts with similar needs. JR West itself has not ruled out using 3D printing for other such initiatives, particularly in rural areas where transport demand is low and operational resources are limited. The reduction in time and costs, combined with the ability to carry out work without disrupting service operations, is indeed a significant advantage. The initiative is also part of a broader framework of technological experimentation within the Japanese railway sector, which has long been exploring solutions to reconcile economic sustainability with maintaining service in more remote areas.

Understanding Japan's Obsession with Trains

Japan's railway network is among the most efficient in the world and has played a major role in reshaping the country’s image after World War II and the U.S. occupation. The symbol of this rebirth is the shinkansen, or bullet trains, introduced in 1964 for the Tokyo Olympics. At the time, they represented the most ambitious railway project globally. While mass automobile adoption was rising in the U.S.—and partly in Europe—and commercial air travel was taking off, Japan chose to invest in an already widely used railway system, making it more efficient and better suited to its largely mountainous terrain.

The new high-speed lines were designed with innovative criteria for the time: more than 100 kilometers of tunnels were built to ensure a path as straight as possible, and wider tracks were introduced to increase train stability. The result was that under these conditions, the high-speed trains could exceed 200 kilometers per hour—nearly twice the average speed of other train services operating in the country at the time. The new railway network helped to boost Japan’s international credibility and promoted its identity based on technological innovation and efficiency. Today, Japan’s high-speed lines stretch for around 3,000 kilometers, connect three of the country's four main islands, and are renowned worldwide for extraordinary punctuality: the average annual delay per train does not exceed one minute.