Shinkansen Bullet Train
Thursday, 28th July 2005 by Alex Turnbull
Here you can see the unmistakable 'noses' of a couple of Japanese Shinkansen Super Express trains, although you might know these better as 'Bullet Trains'. Their nickname is well deserved however, as they regularly run at speeds of 300 kilometres (185 miles) per hour... and they actually plan to increase that speed to 360 km/h!
Woah, that's a whole heap faster than Scotrail ever gets 😉
Can anyone find one of the Doctor Yellow trains which they use for testing the tracks? They shouldn't be that difficult to spot (being that they're bright yellow) but there's only ever been 5 of them, and they generally only run at night...
There's loads of really interesting stuff about this incredible feat of engineering over at Wikipedia.
Thanks to Flo, and me 😀
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
I cant help but be won over by the level of detail in msn’s virtual earth
http://virtualearth.msn.com/default.aspx?cp=38.889804|-77.035291&style=h&lvl=19&v=1
check tht out. thats pretty good.
some areas are not so good though but where it is good, its insanely better than google, except for user friendliness
It isn’t a picture of a Shinkansen Bullet Train though, is it? Going east until you reach the US Capitol reveals an area in not such high detail.
Interestingly Goolge Earth and Google Maps seem to use a slightly different image set. The shinkansen on the right image is not visible in Google Earth, just empty tracks.
Last April, I rode the Shinkansen between Nagoya and Kyoto. I took a couple of second movie clip of the scenery flying by with my digital camera. I stuck it on my web if anyone wants to get a feel for the speed: http://www.singlespeed.org/temp/P4050023.MOV
who’s gonna be the first to post a german transrapid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid), reaching 500 km/h and 430 on a regular basis?
You won’t find a Transrapid in action. There is only one test track here: View Placemark It is in low res and i doubt that it was shot as a train was running. Follow the track to the north and you will find a bigger loop, but that is harder to see. And here is a riddle for everyone: From the northern loop go directly westwards until you hit the border to The Netherlands, then go straight up north a bit more. You will find a strange structure. Guess what it is!!!
I wish that they would release much more high res pictures of europe, there is a lot to see on this crowded continent. Anyone seen a castle yet?
Just west of the northern placemark there is a Eiffel tower-like structure colored red and white.
You can ride the Transrapid in China, but it is too new to be pictured by Google.
By the way: Why did the moderator delete my last comment?
OK, again: You don’t have to go to Japan to ride a highspeed train:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterCity_Express
or have a look at the french TGV
Marsh is right : many high speed train (300+ km/h) lines cover France: From the North (Lilles and up to Brussels in Belgium, or to London), through Paris down South to Marseille or Bordeaux. I’ll try and find nice pics to show.
The ICE in germany looks good on the paper but the reality differs greatly. On good tracks the train does about 200 km/h. There are some high speed tracks but they seldom allow max speed. And there are several tracks where the ICE is much slower than 200 km/h. The TGV is the better high speed train in europe.
MSN just lets you zoom in more than Google Maps. It’s the exact same picture of DC that google uses. If you use Google Earth, however, you can zoom in even more. The problem with MSN is that in many cases (most notably NYC) they have older pictures than Google.
How do you guys manage to pickup specific spots? Do you browse for endless hours to narrow down what you are looking for? Bcoz when I search specifically for bullet train I dont get anything
Here’s a link to the Indian railways fan site…….. Though nothing as compared to Japan’s Bullet or French TGV…… Its something any rail fan would like…… Check it out
Just wanted to correct Mugros’s comment about the ICE. It actually does travel at 300 kmph on the Frankfurt-Siegburg/Bonn route; likewise, 250 kmph is also quite common with the ICE, for instance on the Berlin-Wolfsburg route. So, it’s not quite doom-and-gloom.
hello