Happy New Year! The year 2024 has begun. At the opening of the New Year, I'm going to show you pictures of the Tokaido Shinkansen tracks and trains.
"Shinkansen" is the bullet train that represents Japanese railways. The first Shinkansen, namely Tokaido Shinkansen, was inaugurated between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka in 1964, just before the opening of the Tokyo Olympics. Since then, the Shinkansen route has been extended step by step. Its total network length is currently 3,000 kilometers. There are one million passengers per day.
What do we need to speed up trains? Needless to say, to improve the vehicles' performance is essential. Shinkansen trains have realized it. More importantly, the track should be as straight as possible; however, it's not easy specifically in urban areas. The top photo shows a Shinkansen train, EMU JR Central N700A series, coming out from Yatsuyama tunnel near Shinagawa station. This tunnel was constructed under two highways and the Keikyu line. The exit of the tunnel is located in the first residential area just south of the downtown. The straight track was just barely secured. On the other hand, the photo below is an S-shaped curved track between Tokyo and Shinagawa stations. You can see a Shinkansen train slipping through the concrete jungle. One set of the Tokaido Shinkansen train is 404.7 meters-long, which is the longest passenger train in Japan. Because of its track geometry, the maximum speed of the Shinkansen train is limited to only 100 kilometers per hour in this area.
