On January 26th, JR East Tohoku Headquarters made a press release announcing that a new model, the EMU E8 series, will be soon commissioned on the Yamagata shinkansen. The introduction of the new model onto Yamagata shinkansen was for the first time in 24 years. The E8 series is planned to set the maximum speed of 300 kilometers per hour after one-year test runs.
Let me quickly review Yamagata shinkansen. It's a branch line of Tohoku shinkansen, and a kind of the mini-shinkansens. The route was originally constructed as a conventional line with narrow gauge (1067 millimeters); however, the gauge was changed to the shinkansen size (1435 millimeters) later. The shinkansen trains can enter the mini-shinkansen directly from standard shinkansen lines. The only difference between full and mini shinkansens is the size of the train bodies. The length of a full-sized shinkansen body is 25 meters. In contrast, the length of the mini-shinkansen is 20 meters.
Taking this opportunity, I'm showing the pictures of the existing Yamagata shinkansen trains, the EMU E3 series. Dou you know that there're two kinds of the E3 series? One is the E3-1000 series launched in 1999. The other is the E3-2000 series launched in 2008. Can you see the difference at a glance? The answer is their front lights. The E3-1000 series has "slanted eyes", which look angry. In contrast, the E3-2000 series looks smiling. As a trainspotter, it's fun for me to perceive the fine difference between the E3-1000 and E3-2000 series trains.
