On June 23rd, JR East celebrated the 40th anniversary of Tohoku Shinkansen. In commemoration of the anniversary, the company launched a train with revival colored bodies.
Let me quickly review Tohoku Shinkansen to start. "Shinkansen" is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. Nine routes (3,041 kilometers) in total are operated by five JR group companies. Tohoku Shinkansen was opened as the third Shinkansen route on June 23rd, 1982, between Omiya and Morioka stations. Currently, its route length is 713.7 kilometers between Tokyo and Shin-Aomori terminals. The track gauge is 1,435 millimeters. The electric system is 20,000 V and 50 Hz AC. The maximum operating speed is 320 kilometers per hour.
Let's head to the main topic, "revival colored Shinkansen train (set J66 of the E2 series)". When Tohoku Shinkansen was opened, the EMU 200 series was commissioned as a Shinkansen train. It had cream-colored bodies with green-colored stripes. The 200 series was unfortunately retired in 2013, but these brilliant colored bodies came back as the revival colored train borrowing the bodies of the E2 series. JR East kindly discloses the timetable of the revival colored train on their website for passengers and rail-fans, so, I was happy to see this train in Tokyo terminal last week. It was operated as Yamabiko (echo) super-express between Tokyo and Sendai stations on that day. It's very nostalgic, and not weird at all. The coupled state with the EMU E3 series was also attractive.
The Shinkansen era is going to continue.
