JR Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen Time-Distance Map

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JamieLei
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JR Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen Time-Distance Map

Post by JamieLei »

Here's something that might be interesting. It's very out of date but the concept is there. It's a list of every train running between Hakata (Fukuoka), Shin-Osaka and Tokyo.

Kodama (All stations) in Green
Hikari (Some stations) in Blue
Nozomi (Principal stations only) in Orange

Now what some people might not realise is that the ENTIRE LINE is 2-track, not 4 track. The only passing places are at the stations which means that the all stations Kodama services end up allowing a hell of a lot of trains to pass while waiting in the platform sidings.

For a great view of how it works, find Nagoya at 342.0km (about 2/3 the way down) and then find one of the Kodama services that start there, designated by a number like K574 (you'll have to zoom in a LOT) and then trace it down and see how many services overtake it. Almost every stop there'll be 1-2 trains zooming past in main passing tracks before the Kodama can rejoin the main running lines. In many cases, the stop can be 10 minutes, which is actually incredibly inefficient in terms of Kodama timing, but low cost since it's only a 2-track line.

The disadvantage to all this is that when it goes tits up, it goes tits up. There's barely any padding built into the system at all, so when there's a storm, everything stacks up between Nagoya and Tokyo.
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Kevo00
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Re: JR Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen Time-Distance Map

Post by Kevo00 »

Interesting. If only our railways had such common sense as to allow for passing at 2 platform stations ( alright path dependency and all that).

I thought that things never went 'tits up' on Japanese railways. Or is that a myth?
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Re: JR Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen Time-Distance Map

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It's a myth that's propagated. 30 seconds of delay in one year on the Shinkansen, and all that, is for delay that can't be discounted to external factors... - like monsoon rain and suicides I believe. They've put up half-barriers at some Shinkansen platforms where there's fast non-stop trains to try and drastically reduce the second of the two now.

Yeah... everything does go tits up when there's a monsoon. We were sat for about half an hour because of monsoon rains near Mt Fuji the first time I took the Shinkansen to Tokyo. Of course that means lots of trains stacking up!
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Re: JR Tokaido-Sanyo Shinkansen Time-Distance Map

Post by Kevo00 »

Interesting...and clearly little slack capacity because of the service density.
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