The World’s Greatest Train - Japan’s Shinkansen

Awesome!

Looking forward!

W🎉

Thank you 🙏… enjoyed the documentary

Great Video, as always Sam!

What about the TGV😢, surely that has to be the world's greatest. Still a good documentary.

Awesome as always!

By the time Japan fully opens their MagLev train we will have moved on from climate change to a new thing for people to be scared of, so it might arrive just in time!

when you said it never had a single death your wrong in 2015 or 2016 a guy was struck and killed by one after falling on the tracks, thats why so many japan and china train routes have platform doors

Glad you're covering other railways. Awesome video, cheers.

Great video! Loved it!

Again the same weird mistake about the timeline of the construction of the Shinkansen pops up. The Shinkansen started planning in the 1930s and the plans were finalized by 1939 for the first line (of many). By the early 1940s construction on the Tokyo to Osaka Shinkansen had already began and they did manage to build a good sized portion of the line and some of the tunnels. Yes, they had to stop later into WW2, but they did continue building until at least 1943! That's 50% 1958-1964 timeline of the later project that finished the job.

After the war many improvements to this first Shinkansen line were bundled in with general repairs to the rail system. They did not just stop building and restarted in 1958. They continued doing the little that they could afford to do for this line. The 1958 project was explicitly a project to finish the first Shinkansen line, and was sold to the public as such. Nevertheless, everyone toady likes to forget this little factoid. It took Japan over 20 years to finish the Tokyo to Osaka line from the first day of construction to the day of the first limited passenger operations in 1964. And that line was far from finished even then. They continued to "finish the first Shinkansen line" for almost a decade afterwards. This was a titanic effort that everyone just ignores!

Denying this complicated history of the very first HSR line in the world cheapens the achievement. Japan persevered against all odds, through a world war that they lost, with all the naysayers constantly calling for the project to be cancelled in favor of highways, through financial hardships and 2-3x cost increases. This is extremely similar to how modern HSR projects happen today. By pretending like none of this ever happened you're doing a massive disservice to the development of modern HSR. If you all keep pretending like something that is actually very hard to do is easy-breezy then you're setting everyone up for perpetual disappointment and cancelled projects. Knock it off!

Gives me hope for CHR

JR's Shinkansen is queen and king.

Sam, good video, to be honest, I was not a fan of the music in the intro. Too loud and really didnt sit right.

The Union Pacific 125mph zone is extremely advanced humor

You are aware that the word 'train' does not mean locomotives and wagons, right? Just a 'train of thought'...

Oh boy there is so much I need to correct that the video got it wrong…


N700, N700A and N700S are both used and owned by JR West and JR Central. N700-8000 (the blue one) are owned by JR West AND JR Kyushu.

E7 is used and owned by JR East AND JR West (I am not too sure is East owning E7 and West owning W7.)

And no Sanyo Shinkansen DOES NOT RUN FORMER Tokaido Shinkansen use. Because both the 500 series and (specifically) Hikari Railstar 700 series are all owned by JR west themselves, JR central has NO CONNECTIONS TO THEM SO THEY ARENT FORMER STOCK.

The section about the N700As being transferred to West might be wrong or not true, JR West is heard to get 8 car versions of the N700S to replace the 500 series. But rumor continues as it heard that it was delayed. And N700s of JR central and West are possibly going to scrap already. N700A should still remain for more years before going as well.

And please don’t use mp/h when they use km/h

I've got mixed feelings about the Shinkansen network. Yes, those lines are fast and due to the separation from other traffic extremely reliable. Thats excellent and no small achievement. But its basically a long line from North to South trough the country, with barely any other connections. Not really a dense network interconnected throughout. And the regional lines are often quite slow. Trains aren't as reliable in Europe, thats for sure, but the density throughout the country is a lot higher and there are endless connection points between East-West/North-South running long distance trains etc.. Also upgrading traditional lines to 200/230 kph helps expand the networks drastically, which couldn't really happen in Japan due to the different gauges. In fact, Japan has some 2800km of Shinkansen network, which is impressive and similar to France, Germany has only 1600km of true Highspeed network, but more than 2800km of tracks 200kph and faster, and over 6600km of network served by ICE trains overall.

And just in general, I can't be the only one to consider almost all Shinkansen trains to be utterly hideous, with the N500s and E7/W7 being the least worst. That is something Europe without a doubt does a lot better (Spanish Talgo Ducklings are sort of the exception).

the reason the US doesnt have high speed rail is because of the highway network. Thats because its just how we do things in America. American culture has always been heavily based on automobiles and cars instead of mass transit like Japan

Love hearing real railfans like him talk about how we can make High Speed Rail in the US, and what he says about those silly anti-rail politicians. It reminds of what kind of world we live in nowadays.

Train fans : N700
Me : E5

Bright line sucks and ther soud be forlida HSR bild

The United States is mighty but Japan is far more advanced. Highspeed bullet trains and maglev super train technology, the new american dream..

So cool!

can you please do a video on the revival attempts of the TEE in Europe

favourite shinkansen are the E2 and E3s because when i was a kid there was this video about the shinkansen but that was before the E5.E6,E7,E8,H5 were introduced

テキサス新幹線は日本の新幹線が採用されました。
安全、安心。車両事故０です。　他国のような事故はありません。
出来上がるのが楽しみですね。

P R O M O S M 😏

Beautiful trains 💯

Ridge Racer Type 4 OST !

It has been studied in great detail. If the bullet train were to be introduced in the U.S., it would play the most role between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and between Washington D.C. and New York or Boston and New York

The Sanyo Shinkansen does NOT get hand-me-downs from the Tokaido shinkansen. Their operators are entirely different and individually decide what trainsets to order. The 500 series was never purchased by JR Central (who owns the Tokaido Shinkansen), only JR West (who owns the Sanyo Shinkansen) ever ordered them. The N700s owned by JR West on the Sanyo Shinkansen are technically a variant not operated by JR Central (the N700-7000).

The E3 series trains are often coupled with E2 trains as they have the same top speed of 275km/h. Both are being phased out. E2s are being replaced by E5/H5 trainsets and the E3s are being replaced by E8s to have a common top speed across the entire tohoku shinkansen of 320km/h. Testing and construction is already underway to upgrade the tohoku shinkansen to 360km/h.

Phase 2 of the Nishi-Kyushu shinkansen is just a paper plan at this point. It has not been built because the prefecture it passes through refuses to fund its part as it feels that it wont benefit from the shinkansen. It is currently unknown if it will ever be built.

And for those who don't know, the Tokaido Shinkansen is the MOST profitable high speed line in Japan by a large margin. It also has the largest passenger volume of any shinkansen line (174 million passengers in fiscal year 2019. The next highest passenger volume is the tohoku shinkansen which had just 89.4 million passengers in fiscal year 2019. This translates to a revenue of JPY 1,291 Billion (This is 92% of JR Central's annual revenue) vs JPY 376.3 Billion respectively in 2019. There is a video by JPRail that goes into more detail.

Can you do the same video but with Spain 🇪🇸 and other European countries 🫶🏻?

You were right you really have really outdone yourself with this! Im so pleasantly surprised by this quality!😊

Great video. The Japanese TV channel NHK produces a program about railroads in Japan. If you want to find it just Google "Japan Railway Journal" to stream the shows.

Time to stack up JR Central stocks i guess

新幹線は高速、安全、快適、定時、大量輸送が出来る乗り物です。アメリカの中で人口密度が高い地域には、高速鉄道を敷設すると良いでしょう。

Very good documentary, shinkansen is certainly the best in rail technology.

Japan showing up the world in transport like totally!!!