Who invented Bullet Train?

Hideo Shima, 1964

Who invented Bullet Train ? The first successful steam locomotive, George Stephenson’s Rocket, could manage 20 km an hour. Over the next 150 years steady if incremental improvements in engines, tracks and railway operations, saw speeds reach five or eight times that of the Rocket.

Only France and Japan were thinking seriously about new designs and systems that would go faster, Japans’s Shinkansen popularly called the Bullet Train because of its shape, began running between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964, in time for the Tokyo Olympics, Seventeen years later, but still well ahead of anyone else, the first French TGV began plying between Paris and Lyon.

History of Bullet Train:

Not everything about these trains was new. The newly built rolling stock was streamlined to cut wind resistance, but was still powered by electricity from overhead wires, and still carried by steel wheels on steel rails over conventional (if often newly laid) track bed. The French Japanese were simply pushing the existing technology as far as it would go.

The speeds were impressive, averaging over 250 km per hour over a journey of several hours, and reaching over 500 km per hour in trials. Travel was comfortable, departures punctual, environmental consequences minimal and the safety record impressive, especially once the tracks were fenced off. Similar train lines began to appear in other countries, and the lines could compete with air travel over short distances, being cheaper, taking less time and consuming less energy.

Was that enough? Some thought not and were already experimenting with the next generation technology, a major leap toward magnetic levitation or ‘mag-lev’. No longer would trains run on rails. They would float above them, held up, guided and even driven forward by the interaction of electromagnetic fields between the track and the train. With no motors, the trains would be much lighter and more economical to run. No ‘mag-lev’ train is yet in service, but the Japanese active since 1970, have reached nearly 600 km per hour in trials. Even higher speeds, approaching 1000 km per hour, would be possible with the train running through an evacuated tube.