International Railroad Discussion > New Narita Express paint

In Tokyo I was surprised to see they'd repainted the nose of NEX, or Narita Express, trains. 1 is new, 2 is a photo I took a couple years ago.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/24 18:21 by symph1.

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You can only put so much lipstick on a pig.

1019X Wrote:
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> You can only put so much lipstick on a pig.

I don't understand the comment.  Do these trains have persistant mechanical problems?

J.

American expression for trying to make something that looks ugly, look better by decorating it. 

1019X Wrote:
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> You can only put so much lipstick on a pig.

I know the reason why, so it has little to do with just appearance (or lack there of). It DOES have to do with marketing. I know many people place money far above looks around here.

symph1 Wrote:
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> In Tokyo I was surprised to see they'd repainted
> the nose of NEX, or Narita Express, trains. 1 is
> new, 2 is a photo I took a couple years ago.

JR East just finished doing a Limited Express "makeover" for those trains that go to Chiba, adjacent Boso Peninsula, and Narita Airport. This "makeover" was completed on March 16 of this year, the first day of their annual schedule/train assignment overhaul. I just happened to be in Japan on March 15 to witness some "last runs."

JR East has been quietly repainting the Class E259 train sets to eliminate any reference to Narita Express ("N'EX" and the airplane logo), and this has been going on for many months.  I say quietly, but the alert Japanese railfans had noticed this for a while.

The reason for removing the "N'EX" reference is because E259 has replaced the E257 and Class 255 Limited Express train sets on Shiosai, Wakashio, Sazanami, and other related Limited Express services that serve the areas I mentioned above. JR East didn't want Shiosai trains to have "N'EX" logo/paint to confuse the passengers, for example.

E259 has buit-in WiFi with power socket on every seat, while the older E257 and Class 255 sets would have needed retrofits to have those amenities. To non-railfans, they were showered with advertisements touting Shiosai/Wakashio/Sazanami trains with these "new" IT-related (Information Technology) features.

JR East has shortened the Narita Express territory to the north (no more Omiya or Ikebukuro trains), and eliminated the morning/evening Chuo Line runs to the west to/from Takao. All N'EX trains terminate at Shinjuku to the west, and Ofuna to the southwest. Some of the Ofuna/Yokohama trains were eliminated, so some N'EX runs don't couple/uncouple at Tokyo. This allows for quicker turnarounds and more E259 sets to be available to cover Shiosai/Wakashio/Sazanami trains.

So the new paint scheme was a cover for JR East being frugal with their train sets. I might post a separate report on the Class 255. The saga of E257 is more complicated, so I'll be doing more research before I'm ready to post a report on that train set.

Here are some random videos of Narita Express, in both obsolete "N'EX" and new "E259" paint schemes. Here are the locations and descriptions:

- Old "N'EX" E259s meet at Osaki, on the Yamanote Freight Line tracks.

- New paint E259 at Hirai on the Sobu Line Rapid tracks, Blocked by soon-to-be-retired E217 set.

- New paint E259 passing a E235 at Ichikawa Station, on the Sobu Line Rapid tracks. E235s are slowly replacing the aging E217s.

- Old "N'EX" heading west, at Nishi-Ogikubo Station on the Chuo Line. This run was eliminated.

- Action at Kichijoji Station for eastbound (inbound) trains toward Tokyo, March 15. The new paint Narita Express is the last ever morning run on the Chuo Line. The engineer obviously knew, and when he saw me with the camcorder, he rang the "music horn" (highball the foamer).

I boarded this train, put my luggage in the locker at Narita Airport, then did some joyriding between there and Tokyo before my flight home to the U.S. later in the afternoon.

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Korigaoka1811 Wrote:
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> I don't understand the comment.  Do these trains
> have persistant mechanical problems?
>
> J.

It's your fault for following the "form follows function" philosophy. :-)

E259's bulky cab design is a descendant of Limited Express train set design philosophy from the 1950s - 1970s, where the cab is placed high, and the nose's primary function is protection (safety):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/181_series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/183_series

Some of the modern Limited Express train set have opening panels on the nose, where people are allowed to walk between cab cars (underneath the engineer) for (gasp!) passenger convenience. This is one of the many advantages of preserving domestic manufacturing of train sets, where minor refinements can be done without the miscommunication and bidding process getting in the way of proper designing. I'll take function over ugliness anyday.
 

cchan006 Wrote:

> E259's bulky cab design is a descendant of Limited
> Express train set design philosophy from the 1950s
> - 1970s, where the cab is placed high, and the
> nose's primary function is protection (safety):
>
Ah-ha. Hence this similar design for the Thunderbird.

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symph1 Wrote:
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> Ah-ha. Hence this similar design for the
> Thunderbird.

Class 681s assigned to the Thunderbird has a "sleeker" cab, too. I posted a photo of that in 2022, but here's a better link, an English wikipedia entry on the 681s, and the high cab version is named the "Gangwayed Cab Car" for the very reason I mentioned above, where the panel on the front opens and passenger can walk through the cab cars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/681_series

The reason for having 2 separate designs for the cab is simple - the sleek cab made the EMUs look "modern" and the bulky, high cab for coupling/decoupling multiple sets. I couldn't find specific descriptions of the necessity to couple/decouple easily on the Internet, but from memory, I remember that Thunderbird, and (old) Hakutaka Limited Express trains would run the coupled sets on high ridership segments, and decouple for the lower ridership segments. This was before 2015, before Nagano Shinkansen became Hokuriku Shinkansen with the extension to Toyama and Kanazawa.

On the segments where the 681s ran decoupled, the Limited Express looked "asymmetric" where one end looked different from other. I'm sure that would have invited more "lipstick on a pig" comment.

Off topic, but you can search the Internet regarding the Limited Express "Snow Rabbit" and find that both the old Hakutaka and Snow Rabbit ran on the Hoku-Hoku Line.