Birth of the Shinkansen

A technical and fascinating book on the history of Japan's Shinkansen, the world's first high-speed railway. It is amazing to think that it was created in the 1960s, well before modern computers, and the engineers had no option but to use hand computations, paper tables and graphs to simulate all aspects of the design of the trains and railway lines.

The book covers three main parts: the first part covers Japan just after the end of World War II, when Japan was still under the occupation of the Allied Forces. Former designers and engineers from Japan's military now work on railways, and put their minds on making them better. Their theoretical and simulation work on Japan's trains and railways would include making them faster and quieter (more suitable for moving passengers instead of just cargo). These would pave the way for some to publicly state a desire for a high-speed rail network, with trains able to travel at 200 km/h or better.

The second part covers the design of the high-speed trains, looking at various aspects of the trains (aerodynamics, vibration analysis), rails (manufacturing, reliability), power supply and communications. Remember that this was in the 1950s and 1960s, so engineers have to come up with simplified theoretical models and run simulations on scale models and, later, full size models, to discover how the trains and rail networks would behave. At the time, in the west, few believed that trains could travel at 200 km/h, so the Japanese had to depend on their own research to push on. The engineers also had a short time-line to come up with the design and testing of a high-speed rail before starting production on the actual trains.

The third part looks at the early commercial history of the train and the lessons learned from running it. After an initial start, when problems tend to occur, the book concludes that the major lesson learned was to get at the root of all problems. Even minor problems must be thoroughly investigated, for the problems, if ignored, may later cause major ones. Earthquakes, and the derailments caused by them, lead to redesigns to minimize the possible damage that can occur when such events occur.

The book closes with a brief pictorial history of the various Shinkansen trains, from the earliest ones, to the ones now running in the 2020s.

This is a highly technical book, full of equations and graphs and technical discussions on aspects of trains and railway network design. Those looking for a book that goes deeply into the design of a high-speed railway will find many fascinating details: details that may cause the less technical to quickly skip over to pick out the more general details.