Today, the newest bullet trains can make the trip in just two and a half hours The Shinkansen's record for reliability and safety is impeccable, and accidents are an extreme rarity. One of the secrets to the Shinkansen's success is its innovative propulsion design. Instead of having a locomotive pull or push the train along engineers placed electric drive motors in each of the train's cars. This allowed for more uniform performance characteristics.
Over the years, the Bullet Train has been popular with celebrities and dignitaries. Everyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger German Chancellor Angela Merkel went for a ride. Tom Cruise traveled by bullet train during a press tour for the "Mission Impossible" series. Naturally, he got mobbed by fans. While the late Senator Ted Kennedy The original and most iconic of the bullet trains was the '0 Series. Incredibly, the 0 Series remained in service from until The cockpit of the original bullet train was simple but effective.
The oldest bullet trains had a top speed of mph After the 0 Series came the Series in the s. Other highlights include the menacing Series A trip between Tokyo and Osaka used to take six hours and 40 minutes via the old Limited Express trains, but it was cut down to just three hours and 10 minutes with the Tokaido Shinkansen.
Because of this significant development, day trips to and from the two big cities became more frequent since. By July 13, , two months before its third anniversary, it had already serviced million passengers. And, in , it reached the one billion passenger mark.
By , it became the busiest bullet train line in the world, averaging 23, passengers in an hour per direction. Shinkansen networks that link the islands of Kyushu and Honshu to a number of large urban areas were also established.
The Nozomi trains run on the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen Lines, and are the fastest trains currently in operation in Japan. The Akita and Nagano Shinkansen, The Akita is a mini-shinkansen E6 Series train. Creating the mini shinkansen line included the need to convert existing narrow-gauge tracks, used by non-shinkansen trains, into narrower rails.
These lines meet other Shinkansen tracks in certain areas. These trains run at slower speeds than their full-sized counterparts, but reach areas not previously serviced by bullet trains. By , the mini-shinkansen trains had served over twenty million passengers. The Nagano Shinkansen further connected areas in the Nagano Prefecture. Both of these trains were operational in time for the winter Olympics. The Hokkaido Shinkansen, The Hokkaido Shinkansen is unique in its use of an undersea tunnel, called the Seikan Tunnel.
The tunnel thus connects the northern island of Hokkaido with the main island of Honshu. Future plans include connecting this line to Sapporo by Book your Japan Rail Pass now. Before the Shinkansen, transportation on railways was on the decline in many countries. Certain parts of Shinkansen technology, such as the specialized tracks and safety control systems have been integrated into other rail lines. In , a high-speed service in China, as well as the Taiwan Shinkansen, began operations, and the United States and India are currently interested in shinkansen technology.
The future of the Japanese Shinkansen trains is bright indeed. For decades, Japanese engineers have been working on maglev technology, which uses superconducting magnets to literally levitate the train above its tracks.
0コメント