INDIAN RAILWAYS vs JAPANESE RAILWAYS; THE MAJOR BARRIER..

Hello friends!

This is SHIKHAR SINGH back with another interesting post. When we think about the king of railways in the world, the only country which comes in everyone’s mind is the JAPANESE RAILWAYS. The greatest team of engineers brings such a revolution on rail roads with their researches, technologies and developments that provides the country, a series of bullet trains, high quality suburban train and the god of tracks, THE MAGLEV. So, this post describes the differences in INDIAN RAILWAYS and JAPAN RAILWAYS which covers technology difference, delay reasons, slow speeds etc.

INDIAN RAILWAYS VS JAPANESE RAILWAYS

Before start, one thing which I should mention that although Indian Railways are slow and not much efficient but management of Railways in country of billions of populations where lakhs of people travel everyday was magnificent and no country dares to manage such big population and service thousands of trains every day.

ABOUT JAPANESE RAILWAYS

The major factor which makes Japanese railways so strong was their system which they created before the world war-2. They were working effortlessly on their railways for past 100 years where they developed new system of locomotives, suburban coaches, track system, signalling system, full safety measures and most important their working system in which none of trains was delayed.

Even after worst situations of world war 2 on japan, they renewed the system and worked constantly which now makes the supreme of railways. It is also said that if world war 2 would not happened, the Japanese railway would introduce its first bullet train before the world war.

SAFETY is utmost importance of Japanese railways where no bullet train met with accident during its long service. The various technical equipment caution driver earlier before the accident or automatically stops the train. Besides, PRECISION is one of biggest quality on Japanese railways. It hardly happens that any train gets delayed by 10 minutes. One big case happens in Japan where the train driver committed suicide for 10 minutes delay. SPEED AND TIME is the biggest quality of japan which it remarks on its railways.

THE COMPARISON: The biggest lag we can see in Indian railways was the whole system designed somewhere by other countries. Whether it could be locomotives, coaches, tracks, signals; all were imported from foreign countries. Thus, any new technology that we observe in railways was the gift of developed countries and Railways contribute small changes in that technology which marks a big success in India. In opposite, any small development you would see in Japan is the product of Japan only. Thus they are the leaders in railways.

THE SYSTEM OF TRAINS IN JAPAN

1.The SUBWAY TRAIN SYSTEM which runs entirely underground connecting the various places of the cities in TOKYO along with major cities of japan to Tokyo.

2. The SUBURBAN LOCAL TRAIN SYSTEM which runs at a slow speed near some cities and grassland regions serving lakhs of employees to their office.

3. The BULLET TRAIN SYSTEM connecting the long distant cities of JAPAN with a high speed of 350km/hr. The series include the SHINAKASEN BULLET TRAIN with its series which will discussed below in brief.

4. The god of trains ‘MAGLEV’ connecting again far cities of Japan (newly launched) with its top speed of 600-700km/hr. The MAGLEV train uses other technology for motion discussed in later post.

THE MAGLEV

5. The FREIGHT TRAIN SYSTEM in which freight moves from one city to another. This runs at low speeds and are rarely serviced as freight transport is less demanded in Japan.

OBSERVATIONS: One can see that there were four systems of railways operational in JAPAN; totally controlled by JR (Japanese Railways); each of which is controlled by separate sectors of JR. Thus, it creates less pressure over the controlling body as one body will be focused in one system, unlike the Indian Railways in which entire of freight trains, mail trains, super-fast, premium trains, suburban trains etc. are under control of one body. But, we also have large number of trains over one service line increasing a lot traffic than Japan.

SHINAKASEN TRAIN SERIES

Here is the list of Shinkansen bullet train series operational in Japan. The list is big but we provide important series operational:

1.The N700 SERIES operational in July 2007 which runs at top speed of 300km/hr and ability of tilting with speed of 270km/hr replacing 300, 500 and 700 series.

THE N700 SHINKANSEN

2.The W7 SERIES SHINAKASEN operation on March 2015 which runs at top speed of 275km/hr with design based on earlier E2 series.

THE W7 SERIES SHINKANSEN

3. The E SERIES SHINAKASEN operational on March 2011 which again runs at maximum speed of 300-320km/hr. The E series would include E1, E2, E3, E4, E5, E6 subseries in which E5 series is mostly used by JR.

E7 SERIES SHINKASEN

4. The 0 SERIES SHINAKASEN were the first series of bullet trains introduced in Japan in 1963 which runs at top speed of 180km/hr. They are rarely used but marks the biggest achievement in the world.

THE 0 SERIES SHINKANSEN

5. The 200 SERIES SHINAKASEN operational on year 1980 were second series after success of 0 series capable of maximum speed of 240km/hr. This were largely serviced till date before N700 and E series.

6. The DOCTER YELLOW SERIES are the sets which maintain and check the tracks for shinkansen trains. They ensure regular checking and smooth running of trains on tracks.

THE DOCTER YELLOW SERIES

 WHY SHINAKSEN IS FAST OVER INDIAN TRAINS?

1.The first major reason is its aerodynamic fluid look which easily overcomes resistance unlike the Indian locomotives which have bulgy front design. They easily scrap the air in surrounding providing clear space for the motion.

2. The second major reason is body structure where the Shinkansen moves as complete unit i.e. it moves as complete set and cannot be separated unlike the Indian trains in which individual coaches and locomotive joined together to form complete unit.

3. The third reason includes the motor placement in which individual motor is fitted in each axles or wheels of Shinkansen providing individual power to each wheel; very much different from Indian trains in which the frontal locomotive only provides the power to whole unit for movement. This Shinkansen design can be seen in Indian SUBURBAN trains.

4. The forth reason is difference in track design where the Shinkansen tracks is provided with curved sleepers and pin movement joint. These tracks can easily absorb the high vibrations of train which makes the smooth movement of the train and attainment of high speed. One can also feel no vibration or shaking inside train.

5. The fifth reason is the ability to take turn at high speed, that means, it doesn’t have to reduce speed at curved turns because the whole train can easily tilt at big turns avoiding derailment. Most of Indian trains losses its speed due to big curved turns thus difficulty in high speed attainment.

6. The last reason is small length trains where the Shinkansen trains are short length with only 160 seating capacity along with light aluminium body of whole train. The Indian trains generally are large length of high seating capacity with heavy weights; but this is important keeping in mind the population of India.

Thus, whatever the difficulty, India will soon experience the high-speed bullet trains after completion of MUMBAI-AHEMDABAD corridor; A project initiated by PM Narendra Modi under Japanese observation. India will soon be among the high speed countries.


REFERENCES:

TEXTS: WIKIPEDIA, RAILOPEDIA
IMAGES: GOOGLE IMAGES