200 Km/h Push-pull Trains

"Stick an aircraft engine in it" part 2a - SNCF Turbotrains

Developed in the late 1960s and introduced in the early 1970s, Turbotrains were France's attempt at higher speed rail. Equipped with lightweight and powerful helicopter-based gas turbines, they were capable of 160 km/h service.

However, that introduction date spelled rapid doom for the ETG (Élément à Turbine à Gaz) and RTG (Rame à Turbine à Gaz) types. They were built so they had to be used, the noise and the 430 L/h consumption rate be damned (3 times the consumption of an equivalent Diesel train, and that's just for the prime mover, add another 150 L/h for the generators), but they were constantly moved away from more prestigious routes as soon as those were electrified.

This 1981 photo by Yves Broncard is one of my favourite "so 1970s" pictures: a gas turbine train at Boulogne Aéroglisseurs station, with a massive SR.N4 car-carrying hovercraft arriving in the background - "stick an aircraft engine in it" mentality taken to the max, on land and sea, a combination that seems irrational today.

The last RTGs were withdrawn in the mid-2000s, and one car, T2057, is preserved at the Cité du Train museum in Mulhouse (top photo). But there is another gas turbine train we need to talk about, the one that first bore the letters TGV...

Shionomisaki: Honshu's southernmost point

Southern Kansai is probably best known for the Kumano Kodô, the pilgrimage routes related to the Nachi shrine and temple complex with one of Japan's most famous waterfalls. But Southern Kansai is also Southernmost Kansai, and the Shionomisaki peninsula, part of the town of Kushimoto is as South as it gets for the main island of Japan.

Beyond this lawn and those rocks is the Pacific Ocean: just water for thousands of kilometres in this direction! The nearest substantial landmass due South from here is Papua New Guinea, 35° latitude lower, or 10% of the Earth's circumference!

That's a nice lawn by the way, it would be a shame if someone...

Shionomisaki is basically Honshu's version of "Land's End" or "Finistere", and there is a little leisure complex to mark it. The recent Geopark Centre is good, but the blue buildings in the previous shot, the shop and restaurant and the observation tower, are from a different time and showing their age - case in point, the children's cups in the restaurant with the mascot of the 1998 World Cup in France!

381 series: the last of the JNR-era electric express trains

We mentioned the upcoming withdrawal of the Doctor Yellow Shinkansen track inspection trains, but there is another retirement I've wanted to talk about as it's just happened, and it's a train I had the chance to ride last summer.

Launched in 1973, the 381 series was the Japanese National Railways (JNR) first tilting electric express train, designed to speed up the Shinano limited express services on the winding mountainous route between Nagoya and Nagano. The tilting compensates for G-forces inside the carriages, allowing the train to take curves up to 25 km/h faster without creating passenger discomfort. As such, it is already a significant piece of railway history, with JR Tokai preserving one lead car at its SC Maglev Railway Park museum in Nagoya.

Over the next 50 years, the 381s would be moved around whenever they were superseded on specific routes, but soldier on nonetheless. Their last services would be JR West's Yakumo limited express between Okayama and Izumo, another route with lots of hills and curves. Now, it is replaced by brand new 273 series sets, based on JR West's current express train design, still with tilt.

The 381 series lived through the entire L-tokkyû period, in which many limited express services were marketed with an L symbol signifying higher levels of convenience. This logo was phased out in the 2000s and 2010s largely due to all JR limited expresses running to L-tokkyû standards, and as far as I can tell, the 381s are likely the last trains to wear the L badge, as well as the classic JNR express chevron seen above, on a regular basis.

さようなら381系

The abandoned Arzviller-Henridorff "lock ladder"

On my return to the Plan Incliné (previous post) in 2021, I added a walk along some of the section that the boat lift bypassed. The canal behind this door (lock n°17) has been closed and emptied, the tranquil flow replaced by an overgrown stream, but the paths along it have been maintained, and some sections added to improve the walking or cycling experience.

The lock houses, homes to the workers, are still standing, some used by artists as galleries and workshops.

The boat lift was created to bypass a system of 17 consecutive locks which took a whole day to traverse. I didn't go along the whole route to lock n°1 (I probably would have if Arzviller train station was still open), but beyond the "lock ladder" on the Western side is a 2 km canal tunnel, still in service today and a bit of a traffic jam, as it isn't wide enough for two boats to pass.

I probably should walk the whole route one day. As it's along a canal, it should be easy gradients, it's just the distance between Réding and Lutzelbourg train stations that needs to be covered. I think it'll be worth it, and a chance to see the entrances to the tunnels too.

Latest ambiance from Strasbourg, with love from our end-of-year mascot: Chris Moose!

This monument needs no introduction. I just want to show the names of French scientists and engineers that adorn the base of the Tour Eiffel's first floor - just visible at the bottom of the above picture. Similarly to the German names on Strasbourg's Palais Universitaire, if you've studied science at length at any point, you'll know some of these: Cauchy, Navier, Lavoisier, Ampère...

Hikawa Maru at sunset

Moored permanently at Yokohama as part of a park and seafront promenade, is the ocean liner Hikawa Maru, built in 1928-1930. After life as a passenger ship and a hospital ship during World War II, it survives in impeccable condition - the paint is vibrant and there's hardly any rust to notice.

It is a museum ship and a protected monument, as evidenced by the banners:

(happy captain face) 船内を見学できます: you can take a tour inside the ship

重要文化財 日本郵船 「氷川丸」: Important Cultural Property, Nippon Yûsen ship Hikawa Maru

Obviously, I was too late to be able to visit the ship. I had arrived at Shinagawa late afternoon and was hopping over to Yokohama for a sunset walk-around and dinner.

I'm bringing it up because Mike Brady featured the Hikawa Maru on a recent episode of Oceanliner Designs about ships that avoided destruction and that still survive.

C'est avec grand plaisir que je présenterai le mardi 16 avril à la Maison Universitaire France-Japon de Strasbourg une conférence sur la géométrie pendant la période d'Edo, avec en support le sangaku de Kashihara. Entre grande Histoire et petits calculs. Lien vers les détails 4月16日(火)、ストラスブール市の日仏大学会館に江戸時代の算額についてコンファレンスをします。楽しみにしています！ Looking forward to giving a conference on Edo-period geometry on 16 April at Strasbourg's French-Japanese Institute. Expect a few posts about Kashihara around then. Has it really been 6 years?...

I promised more impressive views from the hills above Toba, and here they are. They're not very hard to reach: the Hiyoriyama circuit is only a couple of kilometres long around the station and involves climbing around 50 m. Hinoyama is further away, further South and a little higher.

The views of the coastline at Toba were good enough for Hiroshige to use in his Famous Views from the Sixty-Odd Provinces to illustrate Shima province (though there wasn't much else, I presume, Shima province was tiny, it was just Toba and the neighbouring town of Shima - also Shima is 志摩 and not 島 "island").

Beyond the islands near Toba, lies the mainland again, the Southern part of Aichi prefecture across the Ise Bay (Minamichita and Tahara), which the car ferry in the above picture traverses.

Japan's rail speed record holder: 300X

Sticking with the Tôkaidô Shinkansen and the SCMaglev & Railway Park, this is the (highly abridged) story of the fastest conventional train in Japan.

Following privatisation and sectorisation in the 1980s, and seeing France and Germany take the lead in the high-speed train department, the three JR companies that had Shinkansen lines set about catching up to offer 300 km/h services where they could. The aerodynamics and sheer weight of the venerable 0 Series and its derivatives weren't going to cut it, so each company designed a prototype train to test new technologies.

JR Tôkai's solution was 300X, officially Shinkansen Class 955 - numbers starting with 9 are trains not open to the public, either prototypes or work trains like Class 923 "Doctor Yellow". Launched two years after JR West's WIN350 and JR East's STAR21, it featured two radically different end cars. The more elegant one, in my opinion, is on display at JR Tôkai's museum in Nagoya, while the other is preserved at JR Group's research centre in Maibara. The intermediate cars have all been scrapped.

The three prototypes took turns to hold the national rail speed record, and, 300X being the last, it took the record last, and holds it to this day. We mentioned the fact that the Tôkaidô Shinkansen still had too many relatively tight turns, but the Maibara to Kyôto stretch is the best part, and that's where this train hit 443 km/h in 1996. This video may, or may not, be that run, but it still looks very fast - note the unusually large, "flying saucer" pantograph cowlings.

Unless JR East decide to go completely bonkers with their ALFA-X prototype, it's unlikely that the record is going to be beaten any time soon. It's not in the spirit of these trains, they are pure test beds and run quite extensively with the aim of increasing service speeds. Records also require special preparation of the tracks, which is why the French TGVs made their 1990 and 2007 record runs before the opening of a brand new line.

But JR Tôkai have gone much faster with their Maglev programme, which holds the world speed record for passenger trains outright with 603 km/h. Behind 300X at the museum is a predecessor of that record holder, MLX01, the first Maglev train to clock over 500 km/h. Again, this is not (just) showboating, the lengthy test programme's main aim is to prove that consistent service at very high speed with this technology is feasible, so that the Maglev Chûô Shinkansen can achieve this when it opens (if Yamanashi-ken can agree on a route).