Japan Railways News/Technical

• Fryderyk HPH

  14 Feb 10, 20:33

  **WEST JAPAN RAILWAY GAINS ON TARGET PRICE HIKE**

  West Japan Railway rose 1.2 percent to 339,000 yen after Deutsche Bank raised its target price on the company to 394,000 yen from 376,000 yen.

  Analyst Seigo Ando said there would only be a limited impact from new government's policy of scrapping highway tolls and added that the extension of the Kyushu bullet train planned for the spring of 2011 will have a greater impact than the market expects.

  The land transport subindex gained 0.5 percent.

• TIB1224Y

  28 Feb 10, 20:30

  JR West Series 500 Shinkansen trains are last operated on the Nozomi (fastest regular Shinkansen service on the Tokaido/Sanyo Shinkansen Lines) service today (28/2).

  Five trainsets (W2 to W6) have been converted to 8-car with downgrade of pantograph components and modification to internal fittings. They have a lower maximum speed of 285 km/h due to concentrated components but are still all-motor-car configuration. The modification is applied to cars 1 thru 4 and 13 thru 16 for the trainsets. All middle cars (5 thru 12) are scrapped.

  I do not have concrete information on the fate of W1 and W8 (last Series 500 running trainsets), W7 and W9 (which seems to be the backup trains) so far which are not converted to 8-car. However due to the original plans of converting 5 trainsets to 8-car and no further news on additional conversions, there may be a chance that these four trainsets will/are already scrapped.

  I will continue to check on the sources as the scrapping of 64 cars (16 x 4) would generate lots of news...

• E5

  28 Feb 10, 20:48

  Do you mind elaborating on what it means by "concentrated components"?

• TIB1224Y

  28 Feb 10, 21:53

  That would mean all the heavy components like pantograph and inverter/voltage control units on the 8 remaining cars. Not all cars carry the component, taking for example that there are two cars with pantograph, ten cars with inverter units in the 16-car configuration. Squeezing that into the 8-car unit will cause the mean weight to increase. The 8-car configuration is 2 tons heavier than the 16-car divided by two (404 versus 204 tons).

  Of course some cars remain their previous configuration but weight 'density' has increased.

• Fryderyk HPH

  28 Feb 10, 22:38

  TIB1224Y, I was wondering whether for those 64 cars, are they able to be coupled to another Shinkansen train? If so they can be fit to another train when capacity demands it...

   

  Are the carriages connected(like the ICE3/our current SBST SMRT style) or are they split in the way the European InterCity trains are done?

• TIB1224Y

  1 Mar 10, 21:16

  Originally posted by Fryderyk HPH:

  TIB1224Y, I was wondering whether for those 64 cars, are they able to be coupled to another Shinkansen train? If so they can be fit to another train when capacity demands it...

   

  Are the carriages connected(like the ICE3/our current SBST SMRT style) or are they split in the way the European InterCity trains are done?

  To my understanding the carriages are suited only for their type, plus the modification of parts (downgrade) of the original trainsets would have cost them some money. The remaining trainsets would likely be used as 'christmas tree' and scrapped for parts to feed the running trains.

  Carriages are connected as 4-unit EMUs for the JRW 500. Means they are permanently coupled for four units and each four units are semi-permanently coupled to the other. Same as our 3+3 for local series 0/100, 200 and 300 (C151, 651 and 751B).

  For folks who are still 'blur' about the JRW 500, it was (before today) the first, fastest Shinkansen train to run regular passenger service on the Sanyo Shinkansen Line from 1997. 300 km/h top speed and 271 km/h average speed was the fastest regular train service at that time in the world. After 13 years of service, the trains are relegated to the all-stop 'Kodama' service on the Sanyo section, thereby erasing all chances to see them at Tokyo station (which is on the Tokaido section).

  One train fan put this as 'Its sad to see the disappearance of the iconic Showa era (1926 - 1989) Series 0 (withdrawn 2008/12) and Heisei era (1989~) Series 500 from Tokyo station', indeed so true...

  Series 0 had been the icon for the high economic boom of Japan in the 1960s. Not one family, adult or kid, don't know about the train. Now if you put this on the JRW 500... Hmm, I would put it as the icon of Japan's railway technological advancement into the 21st century.

• E5

  2 Mar 10, 12:58

  Originally posted by TIB1224Y:

  To my understanding the carriages are suited only for their type, plus the modification of parts (downgrade) of the original trainsets would have cost them some money. The remaining trainsets would likely be used as 'christmas tree' and scrapped for parts to feed the running trains.

  Carriages are connected as 4-unit EMUs for the JRW 500. Means they are permanently coupled for four units and each four units are semi-permanently coupled to the other. Same as our 3+3 for local series 0/100, 200 and 300 (C151, 651 and 751B).

  For folks who are still 'blur' about the JRW 500, it was (before today) the first, fastest Shinkansen train to run regular passenger service on the Sanyo Shinkansen Line from 1997. 300 km/h top speed and 271 km/h average speed was the fastest regular train service at that time in the world. After 13 years of service, the trains are relegated to the all-stop 'Kodama' service on the Sanyo section, thereby erasing all chances to see them at Tokyo station (which is on the Tokaido section).

  One train fan put this as 'Its sad to see the disappearance of the iconic Showa era (1926 - 1989) Series 0 (withdrawn 2008/12) and Heisei era (1989~) Series 500 from Tokyo station', indeed so true...

  Series 0 had been the icon for the high economic boom of Japan in the 1960s. Not one family, adult or kid, don't know about the train. Now if you put this on the JRW 500... Hmm, I would put it as the icon of Japan's railway technological advancement into the 21st century.

  Very sad and a pity. It's one of those shinkansen that has such a futuristic streamline design. Even the cab look like some fighter jet cabin to me.

  By the way, there's quite a lot of suicides and delays in the past 3~4 months.

• Fryderyk HPH

  2 Mar 10, 13:50

  They look quite nice to be honest... Even better than the ICE3-TD...

   

  

   

  What a pity... The oldest set must be only around 15 years of age... Not that old actually...

   

  Maybe they clocked very high mileage already...

• TIB1224Y

  18 Mar 10, 09:53

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  （2010年3月16日01時21分 読売新�）

  Early morning on 15th March, on the Osaka Municipal Subway Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi Line (大阪市営地下鉄長堀鶴見緑地線), a train encountered Automatic Train Control (ATC) fault, disabled the system, continued journey for 6.2 kilometers, crossed a track switch not-in-favour, damaged the switch, entered a different track and stopped 70 meters before a stationary train.

  The 20 passengers on the train were not injured. The Ministry of Transport Kinki Bureau alerted the possibility of collision and derailment from this accident.

  Osaka Municipal Transport says the train is running from Taisho to Kadoma-minami stations (though line all-stop). The fault came after the train left Kyobashi station, the brakes applied and could not be released. The driver contacted the Operations control, where Operations decided not to hinder other trains behind, told the driver to disable the ATC system and continue on to the terminal (Kadoma-minami) station to change trains.

  During the course of the journey, Operations did not hear from the driver, and at around 545 am, before Tsurumi-Ryokuchi station, the driver was shocked when he saw the track switch was not-in-favor. The train went over the switch, damaging it. Operations had forgotten to switch the track back to the main line after the replacement train had used it to leave the depot. The other switch before Kadoma-minami was also switched to route the replacement train in, and Operations told the faulty train to make an emergency stop.

  Operations says 'Forgotten to switch the points, along the way also forgotten to contact the driver'.

  Municipal Transport, Railway department manager had a press conference the same night, apologizing and says 'Multiple errors caused this incident. This may have led to a larger accident such as derailment and collision and there is no excuse for this'.

  ~

  Sounds like the first time Osaka Municipal has gotten its knee deep in such shit. Presently investigations are underway, but it points out that the driver of the train was away on sick leave for a year, back to the job not long ago and on that day there was a tutor driver together with him in the cab. Operations was suspected of handling revised Dia (train running diagram or schedule) and could not contact the driver in time.

  The Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi Line opened in 1990 and uses Linear Propulsion method. Cars do not carry bulky motors but only voltage control units to form magnetic attraction with the rail facilities. By changing the attraction magnitude and direction, the cars can brake and accelerate with little power consumption. Cars are also smaller and lighter. However cost of building and maintenance is often higher than normal railways.

• Dark Honour

  14 Apr 10, 13:53

  i heard that the new kyushu shinkasen will be nicknamed 'sakura' in remembrance of the former night train service

  the most interesting is a through service on the tokyo-kagoshima route

• Fryderyk HPH

  18 Apr 10, 01:22

  there is a tokyo to kagoshima service?

   

  heck that would be damn long lah(by jap standard that is )!

• TIB1224Y

  19 Apr 10, 12:09

  Sakura will only be running from Shin Osaka to Kagoshima. Tokyo to Kagoshima has already been ruled out by officials as it takes far too much time and cannot compete with airliners based on time and effectiveness. Very few people will take such a long through service as well.

  I voted for Hato (��) back in 2008 when they were searching for a name for the new train service. Hato and Tsubame were once the fastest service on the Tokaido Main Line before and after electrification. I had hoped both of the name to appear together again and create history, but sadly Sakura won with quite a big margin from the other names...

  Out of the 168951 odd votes for names, 7927 went to Sakura, 6917 went to Hayabusa, 6720 for Hayato, Satsuma got 6024, Mirai got 3803 votes...