Yamagata-Shinkansen

The Yamagata Shinkansen (Japanese山形 新 干线) is a well-developed as a mini - Shinkansen Japanese railway line between Shinjō Fukushima and the operating company JR East.

History

In order to remain competitive on the ever-growing domestic air traffic, the Japanese national railway company JNR decided in the 1980s to extend the Shinkansen network. Since in the north of Japan's main island Honshu is no particular cities and was therefore not expected to exorbitant demand, has been omitted in the construction of independent Shinkansen routes. Instead, it was decided to rebuild an existing line of the conventional rail network and to toughen up for higher speeds.

The conversion was necessary, particularly for the reason, as the conventional rail network, Japan's Cape gauge, however, the Shinkansen network standard gauge. Since the construction of the mini- Shinkansen transfer-free connections in the direction of Tokyo should be put in a conversion to standard gauge was indispensable in order to bind through trains can.

The first mini- Shinkansen Yamagata Shinkansen was opened in 1992. For this, the OU main line between Fukushima and Shinjō of Cape gauge was converted to standard gauge and signaling and safety converted to Shinkansen standard. The Ou Main Line, which is four divided today as it continues to have sections in Cape gauge.

The maximum speed limit was increased from 100 km / h to 130 km / h, but is well below the maximum speed reached in the Shinkansen network.

Compounds and fleet

On the Yamagata Shinkansen trains currently run the E3 -1000 and -2000 series as Tsubasa connection between Tokyo and Shinjō. Between Tokyo and Fukushima, the trains use the Tōhoku Shinkansen and be coupled together with features of the E2, E4 or E5 series. Therefore, you must meet both the requirements for the tight curves of the Yamagata Shinkansen, as also be able to reach a cruising speed of 275 km / h on the Tōhoku Shinkansen.

At the opening of the Yamagata Shinkansen specially the series 400 was designed and manufactured, since although the track was adapted for the construction of mini- Shinkansen, the loading gauge, however, was left unchanged. Thus, the existing Shinkansen series were too wide. The trains of the 400 series were in use from 1992 to 2009 and were subsequently replaced by the series E3 -1000 and E3 -2000.

Stations

Impact of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011

In the wake of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011 on 11 March 2011, the driving on the Yamagata Shinkansen came to a complete halt. The section between Fukushima and Shinjō was put into operation on 31 March 2011 first. As of April 12, 2012 individual connections to Tokyo were tied again. The number was then increased gradually.