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That's why i hate my country's rail...


JR 500系

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JR 500系

Hi Guys!

 

Well most of us are here for a reason, and that's probably the admiration for the professionalism of how Japan Rail plans, operates, and maintains the extensive railway network of Japan; including all the beautiful train stock that comes with it..

 

I believe most of our own countries have their own Metro/ Rail system... And the reason why i hate mine is they never fail to be late, or they never fail to fail. (That's wierd to say) The system, rails or electronics always fails!

 

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/track-fault-causes-train-delays-on-north-south-line-133143534.html

 

Read more here.

 

I can goggle more of previous news here in regards of the un-countable times they failed due to this and that. But what i feel is the failure was due to a large simple reason: Failure to maintain. And they have the cheek to call themselves world-class. Then Japan will need to call themselves Universe-Class..

 

Share your country's Metro/ Rail stories here!  

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Mudkip Orange

My fascination with the Japanese rail system is completely the opposite of what you've just described.

 

If you go back to the 1940's, we in the US had a ridiculously diverse variety of rail services. There were fast express trains that set world standards for cleanliness and punctuality. The Super Chief. The 20th Century LImited. The Broadway Limited. Hell, at one point the Pennsy was the largest publicly-traded corporation in the world.

 

At the same time, you had a whole lot of low-rent, light-duty services held together with prayer and duct tape. Streetcar systems that hadn't upgraded from open Brill cars. Steam-powered branch lines running mixed trains. And in between you had a whole lot of private operators pushing the envelope of what they could pull off on a shoestring budget. Milwaukee was running steam through little midwestern towns at 100mph. North Shore ran the Electroliners up to 110, but the trains were getting to the crossing before the gates went down - so they set the speed limit at 90. The P&W was matching that through the hills of suburban Philadelphia, which they were only able to pull off using *ridiculous* amounts of superelevation.

 

Then all that went away. The streetcars and interurbans got dieselized. The Key System tracks got ripped off the Bay Bridge in 1958. North Shore folded up in 1963. Penn Central filed for bankruptcy in '70. Amtrak took over the passenger trains in '71 and immediately cut half the routes. It's pretty much all gone now. If you model the modern US, you model freight operations with maybe a couple passenger trains thrown in for interest. If you model US passenger trains, you model the steam-diesel transition era or earlier. That's what it is.

 

But the thing is, Japan never did that. They didn't build massive free highways, they didn't give their streetcar systems to trusts hell-bent on selling cars and buses, and as a result, all the variety that used to characterize American rail is still extant. On the one hand, you have the JR groups. On the other hand, you have Choshi, Enoden, Wakayama. And in between you have legions of other private railways with their own trains, from the Keisei running the new Skyliner on a Shinkansen-grade alignment to Iyotetsu running streetcars and heavy EMUs on the same tracks.

 

And while the Japanese are a detail-oriented bunch, they're also a lot like us in that they tend to keep doing things the way they've always been done until some major cock-up happens, at which point they make broad, sweeping changes after the fact. So for instance, JNR was performing *visual inspections* of tracks all the way up until 1963. Then a three-train pile-up kills dozens, and hey, now you've got dynamometer cars everywhere. A few years later a bunch of jet fuel explodes in the middle of Shinjuku Station and hey, now you've got the Musashino line. More recently you have Amagasaki, in which some dude takes a 30mph curve at 75, at which point everyone says "hmm, maybe we shouldn't flog the operators for being 3 minutes late."

 

So while the Shinkansen does indeed set world records for safety and punctuality, that's not really what I find alluring. It's the huge variety in companies, rolling stock, operating practices... everything. Japan's golden age of railway travel is right now, and that's pretty cool.

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bikkuri bahn

It's all relative I guess.  The Brits like to slag off their railway system, but as an American visiting that nation, the railways are like fricken Star Wars compared to what we have back home in most places.  I daresay I felt a familiarity with Japan when I first experienced it- no doubt the high platforms and frequent service helped in that respect.

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westfalen

I'll go along with Bikkuri, I was quite impressed with the British railways, except for the railcar I caught from Ipswich to Felixstowe that looked like it hadn't been washed since it was built. It did run on time though.

 

I think my main interest in Japan is the variety that you can still find on the country's railways, although, in a way, diminished even snce my first visit in 1990. In Australia you generally only have one passenger train a day on non-commuter main lines that still have any passenger service at all, the local stopping trains and branch line services are gone (if the branch lines are even still there) whereas Japan is a regular smorgasboard in comparison. The fact that it all runs like a Swiss watch is just a bonus, actually, after spending a week in Switzerland and missing a few connections because of late trains I'd even say better than a Swiss watch.

 

It will be interesting to see what happens to railways here in Queensland with the governments announcement a couple of days ago that they intend privatising QR's passenger operations and everything else left after the sell off of the freight operations by the previous government a couple of years ago.

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JR 500系

Thanks Mudkip for the brief history of US trains! I've heard of the Santa Fee and the BNSF from my Lego times, but i didn't know they had such a vast variety!

 

Well, at least JR rails don't crack off, or electric cables coming off from the tunnel roof, or even screws dropping from overhead elevated tracks...

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Nick_Burman

I agree with what Mudkip says. What attracts me is the variety, both past and present. But then, even the US or Europe is more attractive to someone who lives in a country who made a point of wrecking its rail system beginning in the late 1950's (and which hasn't finished doing so...) and which has converted what remains into simple conduit systems for soybeans, iron ore or whatever commodity it's trying to flog into the international market. Let alone the fact that it has become a sort of repository for second-hand (mostly rolling scrap, to be used until a major catastrophic failure sidelines them) US diesels, which wouldn't be bad if they weren't just about all from the same model... and what to say about a country of Brazil's size which has 3 (yes, THREE only - and one of them is every second day) long-distance passenger routes in the whole of the land - even Amtrak with all its shortcomings does it better! I'm looking forward to my trip to "Lunnon" next year, even the grungiest British train is a luxury compared to the no train situation we face down here...

 

Bad as the SMRT might be, the 5 million Singaporeans can at least travel across the island without resorting to private cars, which is a situation definitely much superior to the lot I face (or used to face but will face again from October onwards) in São Paulo, where 14 million inhabitants are hard-pressed to find a way to fit the 100km Metro system into their daily commuting habits so as to avoid the traffic jams...2h to cover 30km these days is not unusual. Even the Metro is no real relief, rush hour loads have reached pre-Oedo Line Tokyo levels, the only missing element are the pushers...

 

 

Cheers NB

 

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Mudkip Orange

The way I see it, the Brit and US rail systems share two commons traits: (i) We haven't done nearly enough improvement in the last 60 years, but (ii) the original systems were built to such a high level of service that it's still decent.

 

So on the one hand, you can look at the 90mph speed limit on the NEC through Connecticut and you can curse Amtrak and the other agencies for not having upgraded it already. On the other hand, you can look at the 90mph speed limit on the NEC through Connecticut and say "damn, those New Haven guys did a good job back in the day."

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