Officials probe cracks found under third Nankai 50000 series "Rapi:t Airport Express"

[bill937ca]

Officials probe cracks found under Osaka trains that could have led to 'serious incident'

 

OSAKA – Transportation authorities found a 10-centimeter crack on the undercarriage of a train car belonging to Osaka-based Nankai Electric Railway Co. on Tuesday, following the discovery of a similar 14-cm crack on the undercarriage of a train of the same model on Saturday..

 

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/08/27/national/officials-probe-cracks-found-osaka-trains-led-serious-incident/?fbclid=IwAR2_WmrXPwgU59Q0PQBk7Udbfj-i-GbRcjMB3ctjg1MojwizOEdcVxNg5e4#.XWUtF-hKjcd

[bikkuri bahn]

TV news report:

 

[marknewton]

I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at in the video. Is it the traction motor suspension lug?

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[bikkuri bahn]

Yeah, looks like it.  Not the bogie frame which is what you first think of in these cases.

[marknewton]

That’s the trouble when the general/mainstream media reports railway topics. The term “undercarriage” means nothing to me on its own.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[ben_issacs]

Folks, 

Yes, a rather meaningless shot, a much better one would be to show much more of the bogie frame so one could work out where these cracks actually are.

Regards, 

Bill, 

Melbourne.

[bikkuri bahn]

In railway technical matters, newspapers as we know are pretty bad in the U.S. I find the Japanese papers in general (i.e. in the Japanese language) are better as the populace use/are around railways in their daily lives, but translation into English is dismal- typically you can get a better description from machine translation (coupled with familiarity with railway tech) than a human translation.  

Anyway, Nihon Keizai Shimbun is reporting that the bogie maker in the past has said that Nankai has been subjecting the bogies to greater power application/stresses (larger/heavier traction motors?) than the design parameters.  Nankai is scheduling a press conference this evening at 5pm. Perhaps things will come to light.

[RogerMc]

There's a better image 40sec into the video. Hopefully this URL starts at that point.