Could you believe people were travelling at a speed of 285 km/h (177 mph) 60 years ago?
EDIT: I made a mistake! The maximum speed of 285 km/h belongs to the modern trains which are used today. The first generation of Shinkansen reached 210 km/h (130 mph) instead, which is still very fast but not as crazy as I first thought.
The Shinkansen has such a smooth ride. It’s like being on a cloud that travels mind bogglingly fast.
To avoid confusion, the first Shinkansen line is the Tokaido Branch. The first Shinkansen train was the 0 Series:
Which is one of the most visually iconic trains ever made. This beast stayed in service until 2008.
Beautiful
Basically a plane cockpit plugged into a train, if I remmeber correctly that was the inspiration of the first generation and later it was diving bird beak profiles to improve tunnel issues…
The US actually passed a bill after the Japanese success to do their own. Grift and incompetence let them down a bad strategy that relied on gas turbines and using existing track.
They just make so much sense for the east and west coast.
Also, no fatal derailings on a shinkansen, ever, in a mountainous country prone to earthquakes and is the origin of the word tsunami.
IMO that’s even more impressive than the speed alone, other countries that have high speed rail don’t even have that impressive a safety record.
This is one of my favorite facts to share with my fellow Americans as a way to show how far behind our infrastructure is to the rest of the world.
Mine is the difference in Internet in Korea and the US
There is free wifi fucking SVERYWHERE in Seoul. But I never found it to be all that fast. Same for the internet speeds in the hotels I stayed at.
I’ve been on those trains and it’s just breathtaking how well everything works. It still feels like travelling in the 60s i guess - with lots of space and all the other comforts one should have …
210 km/h in 1964 was crazy though. Most regional lines in central Europe still cannot match that.
I wish the old Tokaido with its fifty-three walking stations, was still intact.
https://creco.net/tokaido-53stations-complete-walking-guide/ (site in Japanese)
At least you can still make the pilgrimage over ~18 days.
But since even on normal speed trains it takes less than 9.5h from Nihonbashi to 3jo-Ohashi, only the most dedicated cross country hikers would be interested, or perhaps a group would for an annual or once every few years event.
I grew up out that way. It was something I had wanted to do the moment I heard about it in school.
Sadly, I’m in America now, with all that entails.
Sometimes I play the Tokaido board game and dream though.
(Side note: why does Japanese text immediately disappear on entry in Voyager, iOS 26?)
Given that planes existed at that time, yes I believe they were traveling even faster than those speeds
Just 5 years later we went to the moon going 40k km/h lol
