Japan's Narrow Gauge Railway Story 

because everyone mentions the whole acela comment: the acela express (and most every other train on amtrak's northeast corridor) has a fairly high top speed similar to other high speed trains, but is also hampered significantly by old, old infrastructure. at several points in it's journey from boston to washington, DC the acela has to slow down to under 50kph for bridges built as early as the 1920's and 30's, as well as significant traffic and some curves that remain tight to this day (hard to develop new rail infrastructure with communities built along the line for a century or more). it's probably a stretch of a statement, but i've looked up some of the facts since: -the acela's entire route is 735km (457 mi) -for only 54.6km (33.9 mi) the acela can run at it's top operating speed (mostly between new york penn and washington DC) -the acela's AVERAGE speed through it's entire route from boston-DC is 113.1km/h (70.3mph) the whole narita express doing 130kph/acela at 130mph is NOT a confusion between imperial and metric lol. unfortunately the N'EX's average speed statistics aren't out there, i'm sure someone can calculate it based on operation times. it's probably still slower than the acela but remember it has to do a much shorter distance with a much newer route. it certainly was fast when i rode it, with very few slow sections. when i get around to doing other parts of this series (stay tuned), yeah, i'll take it easier on the stretch claims to at least appease the foamers (i am aware that there are a lot of standard gauge rail lines in tokyo no less the whole of japan that are private, non HST railways (keikyu railway being an obvious example). obviously people on youtube love to complain about every detail. but the point remains of japan's british railway origins and the uniqueness of it's common gauges.

Narrow gauge isn’t just a frontier rail gauge. It’s also useful when geography makes standard gauge more difficult. Look at Switzerland’s metre gauge for example…

Damn this was a good video! As a Tokyo resident myself and having an interest in trains on and off since childhood, I’ve noticed just how narrow the tracks look as opposed to the train cars themselves. The various train gauges you can see around Tokyo tells a story of how their train systems grew and developed. For instance, the former Kokutetsu and The Tokyu lines exclusively run on narrow gauge track, however the independent Keisei and Keikyu railways run on standard gauge and are famous for their speed and stability. Keio, which is a major private railway runs on scotch gauge. Usually seen under trams. This is because the Keio lines were originally tram lines running between central Tokyo and (now developed) rural countrysides. Thanks again for making this video! It’s nice to listen to a perspective other than some tetsuota lol

Great video man! Would love to see more of these types of videos

Thank you for doing this!! I really love Japanese Railways and this is a great insight to their gauge

Wow, wonderful work and great video! I learned a lot, thanks

Super interesting! Thank you for the well made content. Subscribed!

That was time well spent! Thanks.

Brilliant video, I want more videos like this!

Wow this was very interesting thanks for sharing it with us.

Great video, strange that it doesn't have more views.

You should continue these stories it was very interesting.

Damn. I came from a shitty video with 170k views that taught me almost nothing about gauges, to a smaller channel that had actually interesting and informative content. Glad I clicked.

Love this!

0:10 Actually the 39m also includes neighbouring cities e.g. Yokohama. Think a reason why their cars are small is also because even in cities many people live in landed property, so to fit all of them (given the high population density) the land that each house sits on has to be smaller, & so does each house's carport - which a smaller car can more easily fit into

Indonesia and philippine use 1067mm gauge too.

I'd have to dig out my books to look it up, but IIRC the choice for narrow gauge didn't originate with Morel. The decision to use 3'6" gauge had already been made before Horatio Nelson Lay was shown the door for his incompetence and dishonesty in managing the railway project. Who actually made the decision to use narrow gauge is not known.

One thing about your Acela comment at 6:30, Acela operates at 125mph, while you're saying these Japanese trains operate at 130kph. Not quite the same. Very nice to see the history though, and I will easily admit Shinkansen is faster than Acela.

Fek man, keep going!

It is close to metre gauge railway line... Actual Narrow Gauge is 2.6 and 2. I think it is different as per the countries.

wowowowowow

you should get paid for this.

Well now if feel a microbe dumber for to realizing this.

Why don’t bullet trains use narrow gauge?