JR East Series E6

By -
Oops... sorry I missed another week. I haven't been very good this year have I. However, I do bring you another very fast train, and this time, it's actually something we the general public can ride on (well, given a trans-Pacific flight ticket is taken care of and all that).

E6 will mostly operate together with the E5 on high-speed lines
Let me present you the Series E6 Mini-shinkansen (meaning the trainset needs to come off the high speed lines at some point and operate along existing lines at no more than 80 mph and need to fit into a smaller loading gage similar to trains on the existing narrow gage trackage) operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East). This tilting electric multiple unit may look a bit familiar. Yes, she sports similar exterior design to her bigger cousin, the E5, and she's also the production product of the test train Fastech 360 Z (Z for Zairaisen or existing line). The E6 wears a pink livery, resembling the E3 operating on the Komachi service between Tokyo and Akita. As you may have guessed at this point, the E6 will be operating on the same route, and will be dubbed the Super Komachi.

What a pretty face
Pre-production E6 went into testing in 2010, and production officially began in November of 2012. The trainset is built by both Hitachi and Kawasaki. The top speed of the E6 is 186 mph in service for the time being and will eventually (2014) be raised to 199 mph.

Comments

Matteo Mortari said…
Ciao
Thank you for your articles, always very interesting. I would like to know if you can focus one of the next articles on the main differences of Japanese rolling stock, Vs European, please? For instance, I think I understood the nose is shaped very long for Japanese trains to facilitate airflow while entering a tunnel, but I haven't understood why pantographs have those kind of "wings" on the side? Is it to decrease noise or they have a functional purpose in the current collection as well?

Thanks and keep up with your blog is very interesting!
Cheers from Italy
Apr 26, 2013, 3:14:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Briefly on the AAR Coupler Part 2

By -
Image
Last week, we've identified the Janney coupler and briefly looked at its elegant design. This week, let's, again, very briefly, look at the different types of Janney coupler that are widely used today. I will only talk about the head of the coupler, and ignore anything that the general public may need to trespass onto railroad property and get in a unsafe situation in order to have a good look at. As far as coupler heads are concerned, there are 3 types in used today. Type E, F, and H. Types E and F are used on freight, and H used on passenger equipment. Since the withdrawal of passenger service in North America by private railroads, the Type H standard is no longer maintained by the Association of American Railroads, a trade group formed of major freight railroads, but is under the control of the APTA, the American Public Transportation Association. Now let me introduce another term, slack. Slack is an allowed gap between two coupled up couplers. In other words, when most ...
Read more

Amtrak NPCU

By -
Image
The NPCU or Non-powered Control Units are control cars used by Amtrak that are modified from surplus EMD F40PH locomotives. A control car is a generic term for a non-powered railroad vehicle that can control operation of a train from the end opposite to the position of the locomotive. They can be used with diesel or electric motive power, allowing push-pull operation without the use of an additional locomotive. Control cars first appeared in the USA and France in 1960s. Trains operating with a locomotive at one end and a control car at the other do not require the locomotive to run around to the opposite end of the train when reversing direction. In the United States, most control cars are modified from retired locomotives by removing tractive equipment and adding side baggage doors and have been used on several passenger railroads. The control cars are connected through the consist of the train by standard AAR 27-wire multiple unit jumper cables. The NPCUs at Amtrak are a...
Read more

SD70ACu

By Yi -
Image
After the post on the shiny rebuilt GE road power, it's only fair to have a look into what Progress Rail has to offer on their side of the table. I'm using the company's recently-changed, formal name of course. For those who are not up-to-date on the current state of North American railroading affairs, Progress Rail is the company (owned by Caterpillar) that purchased EMD a few years ago. The SD90MAC was arguably the biggest gong show in EMD's recent memory. It happened at a time when they were comfortably resting on their laurels, unaware the fateful changes that were about to occur in the locomotive market in the not-so-distant future (they got beaten badly by GE). What was supposed to be one of the most remarkable locomotives whose presence is to grace the mainlines in modern history, turned out to be an utter disaster (I'll redirect further readings to Wikipedia). As a result, today, the number of SD90s still in operation on a Class 1 Railroad is, if not id...
Read more