International Railroad Discussion > Japan - Nozomi vs other Shinkansen trains

I'm aware that the Nozomi Shinkansen are the fastest of Japan's Shinkansen trains.

Are they also the newest?

And how would they compare otherwise to the Hikari, Sakura, etc. in terms of equipment, etc.

Thanks.

wzd Wrote:
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> I'm aware that the Nozomi Shinkansen are the
> fastest of Japan's Shinkansen trains.

"Nozomi" describes the class of service. For example, on Tokaido Shinkansen Line, there are Nozomi, Hikari, and Kodama services, in terms of speed measured in time (and implicitly, number of stops) from fastest to slowest. Kodama trains make every stop, what one would call a local service.

> Are they also the newest?

What you should be looking at are the type of train set, for example N700, N700A, and N700S. I'll leave it up to you to look at the technical specs (English wikipedia is available for all the train sets). The newer ones might have better acceleration/braking numbers, possibly due to more power, but all the N700 variants  have a top revenue speed of 300 km/h on the Sanyo Shinkansen Line (west of Shin-Osaka), and 285 km/h on the Tokaido Line (between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka), mainly due to tighter ROW curvature.

> And how would they compare otherwise to the
> Hikari, Sakura, etc. in terms of equipment, etc.

The non-local services (Nozomi, Hikari, Mizuho, Sakura) use variants of N700. Local services west of Shin-Osaka still use Class 700 and 500. Mizuho and Sakura are through service trains on the Kyushu Shinkansen Line (Hakata to Kagoshima-Chuo). Within the Kyushu Shinkansen Line, there's Class 800 used for the local Tsubame Service.

Mizuho and Sakura do not go east of Shin-Osaka. The explanation is somewhat complicated, but without more thorough understanding of the Shinkansen system, it might not make sense.

FYI, JR East's Tohoku Shinkansen sets, E5 and E6 are faster than N700 variants, with a top revenue speed of 320 km/h.

If this is all complicated, I recommend you find wikipedia entries for the terms I've mentioned here, and let all that sink in.

When I went to Japan (about 10 years ago) I made the mistake of failing to understand how the Shinkansen worked. I had a Japan Rail Pass; it was not valid on all Shinkansen. As it happened my final journey was after the pass expired so I went on one of the fastest trains (not permitted using the pass) half expecting a much more sprightly trip than all the others. Wrong! It was the same train running at the same speed just making fewer stops.I got caught out by the ticket barriers on that last trip. Up to that point I had simply shown my pass at the manned gate. I'm used to ticket gates here in the UK where you just put the ticket into the gate and keep hold of the seat reservation. I tried that at Himeji and it didn't work. OK, I thought, I'll put in the seat reservation. Still no luck. Then someone showed me you have to put both in at the same time.

In some ways, it was the non shinkansen trips that I found most interesting. From Fukoka to Nagasaki the train had a tilt mechanism and a railfan view (but only available using "Green" class). I also went from Kumamoto up into the Aso volcanic caldera. A diesel multiple unit running on an electrified route to start with. Then, as we started the climb into the caldera we came across a reverse/zig zag section which was unexpected.

I also took a ride on the Oigawa Railway. The train was steam hauled with an electric giving a bit of extra push on the rear and even the electric was interesting! It happened to be cherry blossom season and there were people all along the line taking video and photos which I suspect included both the train and the blossom. I was almost tempted to get off and join them!

Thanks for responding to both of my queries. The information is much appreciated.

Bill D.

These classifications only have to do with number of stops, not max allowed speed between stops, correct? Therefore, couldn't the same trainset make one run as a Noxomi and then a return trip as a local?

symph1 Wrote:
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> These classifications only have to do with number
> of stops, not max allowed speed between stops,
> correct? Therefore, couldn't the same trainset
> make one run as a Noxomi and then a return trip as
> a local?

Yup, and it happens often enough. On the JR East side, I've seen the local Nasuno trains use E5 or even the E5+E6 coupled sets to Tokyo, then turn around as Hayabusa + Komachi for the 320 km/h run to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto.

Specific to Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansens, train service = train set = speed started when Class 300s were new, back in 1992. Before that, Class 0 and 100s served just Hikari and Kodama services. 0 and 100 sets had similar top speeds (220 km/h).

Class 300s, using AC traction motors had a significantly higher top speed of 270 km/h. To take advantage of that technology improvement, JR Central and JR West introduced the Nozomi service, with higher limited express fees than Hikari and Kodama.

Since Class 0 and 100 train sets couldn't run on the faster Nozomi schedules, they continued to run on Hikari and Kodama services.

Since passenger railroading in Japan is supposed to be profitable, it would have been fiscally irresponsible to retire the 0s and 100s prematurely, so for almost 2 decades, the railroad managers had to formulate schedules to accomodate 3 train sets with 2 different top speeds.

Add the 300 km/h "bullet looking" Class 500 in 1997, the 285 km/h Class 700 in 1999... 5 train sets, 4 different top speeds.

I posted a report from that era in 2008:
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?6,1788388

The newer Class 700 had slower top speed because business travelers complained about the lack of interior room and luggage space on the aerodynamic design-centric Class 500. 700s has a less slanted but turbulence-managing "platypus nose" to accomodate more room and more passengers (on the end cars) than the Class 500, sacrificing top speed.

All moot now with near-universal use of N700 variants today. Anyway this just scratches the surface.

Another consideration the JR had was the interoperability of the different equipment they had in terms of capacity and seating arrangements.
As long as things are smooth, it does not make much difference, but once something has just happened and the dispatcher wants to swap the whole train set with another, then different capacity and seating arrangements do matter.  
That is another reason they decided to go with the class 700s.

Hope this helps.

Hiroshi