In Japan they built a 3D printed railway station in just six hours

For the first time in the world, a railway station was built with 3D printing. And this would already be news (In Ukraine they had succeeded with a school). If then to Arida City, in the prefecture of Wakayama south of Osaka in Japan, it happens that they only need to Six hours (indeed less) to assemble it, then the news ends up in newspapers around the world.
The new Hatsushima station was built to replace an old structure, still in wood, dating back to 1948. The station, automated and therefore without staff since 2018, is located along a railway line that is not very busy for the Japanese standards.

Small but functional

The station – Basically a shelter, a quay and a appearance room Like many stations of the villages of the Italian province – it was built using prefabricated components. The printing of the components – reinforced in steel and framed in concrete – took seven days in the workshop of a company specialized at over 800 km away. The pieces were then transported on the road and arrived a few days in advance. Due to the rigid safety regulations for passengers and workers near the railway lines in operation, the construction works are generally limited to night hours to avoid interruptions of the service. Having produced the components away from the railway line has made it possible to save months of time.

The actual time

After the departure of the last train at 23:57, the workers immediately started their frenetic work with a crane that dropped each pre -printed segment in the correct position, mounting the entire structure a few meters away from the old station. Obviously the most rigid anti -seismic standards have been provided. The main structure, a small house (whose surface is just over 9 square meters and the ceiling is less than 3 meters) was covered with the mortar and was completely set up before the arrival of the first train at 5:45 in the following morning. A really small station (it serves about 530 passengers per day with a maximum of three races per hour) but correctly proportionate to the needs of local traffic and which has now become a casus in the world of architecture and public infrastructures. The small building can be considered completed but the ancillary structures, from automatic ticket offices to readers of magnetic tiles to digital signs with information for travelers, needed another couple of days for definitive installation. The opening to the public and the inauguration are scheduled for July. The railway company has obviously foreseen to renew many other provincial stations with this type of construction, at low costs and also saving on personal.