Central and East Asia Read online

  It seems a pity that North Korea will miss out on such modern railway travel – or will it? Construction is proceeding on two trans-border lines, one in the east and one in the west, connecting North and South Korea through the demilitarized zone (DMZ). The actual connections have already been completed (see map above).

  The trains used will be high speed, although the exact form – derived from others’ high speed technology, such as the French TGV already used in South Korea, or developed ‘in-house’ – is not yet known. But the leaders of both countries have publicly stated that their aim is to see Standard gauge high speed trains running from “Pusan to Paris”. (Pusan, also known as Busan, is at the south-eastern tip of the Korean peninsula.) And of course, if a high-speed train can reach Paris, conceivably it could reach London…

  The Chinese have already expressed a will (see China above) to operate trains from Beijing to London – will the Koreans want to link up with the same lines and do the same from Pusan via Seoul? As surmised above, whether there will be enough passengers who would want to spend 30 or more hours on a train simply to get from A to B to make such an operation economically viable remains to be seen. But from a technical aspect, the common 1435 mm gauge (together with 25 kV AC overhead current collection and other common standards) makes the idea technically quite feasible.

  Today, South Korea has around 5200 km of route distance, of which about 3500 km is electrified.

  Trams and metros:

  South Korea is much further ahead in building metro/light rail systems compared to its neighbour to the north. Seven systems are already in operation, with an eighth under construction (along with extensions in Seoul and other cities such as Daejeon). All are relatively recent (the earliest was opened in 1985 in Pusan), and all are to 1435 mm gauge – there was of course no reason to build to any other gauge (I have excluded Daego’s monorail Line 3). The largest system is in Seoul, and consists of both underground and urban rail lines.

  When it comes to trams, both Seoul and Pusan once had extensive tramway systems, dating from around 1915. Originally built to 762 mm gauge, they were re-laid to Japan’s 1067 mm gauge in the 1920s, which enabled them to use some old tramcars from Atlanta and Los Angeles in the USA. They both closed in 1968.

  There are no tram systems today in South Korea.

  JAPAN

  Our last country in East Asia, Japan, not only has the third largest economy in the world (it was second until eclipsed by China), but is also one of the most densely populated, at least in its major metropolitan areas (the greater Tokyo area has a population exceeding 36 million). It is to be expected therefore that Japan would have an extremely well-developed rail network, and indeed it does.

  This network (excluding subways and metros) however is clearly divided between slower rail services (both local and inter-city) and high speed long distance trains – the famous Bullet Train, or Shinkansen. And the main reason for that clear division is the different gauges of the trains running on those two quite separate networks – only where there are dual gauge tracks do trains of these different gauges share the same rails. But even that clear division is actually starting to become a bit blurred, as we shall see later.

  While we think of Japan as being a very car-conscious country, the railway is perhaps much more a part of Japanese culture. And it is not hard to see why. Until after World War II, the motor car was a rare thing in Japan, resulting in almost all travel being by train or bus. The very first cars made in Japan were in fact British – the famous Austin Seven, already made under licence in Germany, was similarly made under licence in Japan before World War II. But the railway of course goes back much further than the car – though nowhere near as far back as in most other countries.

  Japan’s railways are considered to be some of the most efficiently run anywhere in the world. It’s quite common knowledge that not even the Swiss can match the punctuality of the JNR (Japan National Railways). Trains leave on the split second, the average delay is a mere six seconds, and a delay of even so much as one minute demands an apology from the staff. A delay of five minutes can make headline news in newspapers. (Having said that, I find that the majority of British trains also leave on the split second, at least from their original starting point.)

  Not all rail travel in Japan is so benign. Underground and commuter trains can be a nightmare of overcrowding, including the use of ‘pushers’ – platform staff equipped with large boards on poles – to cram as many people as possible on to a train. This has the effect of not only getting more people on an already overcrowded train, but also enables the train to leave on time. Overcrowding has led to some molestation of female passengers, resulting in the provision of women-only carriages.

  Nonetheless, unlike in say, America, where the airplane is king, and the passenger railway almost an irrelevance (except perhaps in the Boston-Washington North-East Corridor, and the odd commuter service in places such as Chicago), Japan’s dense railway system is highly successful in moving vast numbers of people each and every day throughout the country, both local and long distance. As we have seen in other countries in Asia, the railway is crucial to Japan’s functioning.

  History:

  Railways came very late to Japan. Well into the second half of the 19th century, the country was brutally ruled by the Shoguns, and remained closed to outside visitors, as well as any influences from the outside world. While Europe, America and most other parts of the world had been embracing the railway for 40 years or more, in Japan, up until the 1870s, its citizens were still consigned to travel by foot, ox cart and on horseback, if they actually travelled at all.

  In the 1850s, the Shoguns did get some exposure to the railway, when they were presented with a model of a steam locomotive by an American US Naval Commander, Matthew Perry, who had been permitted to visit Japan as part of the high-level process of opening up trade links with the US. In these negotiations, it is said that Perry, a mere naval commander, would see no-one less than the Emperor himself.

  However, notwithstanding the US’s huge influence at this time in forging links with Japan, it was the British that the Japanese turned to when it was decided that a railway system was an essential part of the industrialisation that Japan realised was necessary if it was going to be able to take advantage of its newly opened links with the rest of the world, especially the US. Accordingly, through British envoy to Japan Sir Harry Parkes, Japan invited British railway engineer Edmund Morel to advise on the building of the first railway, from Tokyo to Yokohama.

  Morel, already with extensive Asian experience in railway building, was appointed as First Engineer-in-Chief, whereupon he became revered as the father of Japan’s railways, and is honoured as such to this day. But was Morel really such a good railway engineer?

  Morel advised on using the narrow gauge of 1067 mm (3 ft 6 in). The reasons are unclear, and are maybe another of those ‘urban legends’. Some reports indicate that Morel chose the narrow gauge because Japan was a very mountainous country, and something less than Standard gauge made construction easier. Considering the short distance between Tokyo and Yokohama, and not a particularly mountainous route, that reason seems tenuous at best.

  Other reports say it was to save on costs (and we have already seen a similar situation in South Africa, where the same 1067 mm gauge was chosen to save on costs, even after Standard gauge rails had already appeared – see Part 3). Another story says that the narrow gauge was actually the result of a mistake in the ordering of the sleepers (ties), and narrow gauge sleepers were sent from Britain instead.

  Rather than waste them, as well as lose a lot of time waiting for the next shipment to arrive, Morel decided to use them as supplied. If so, it was a quite extraordinary decision – while that first railway from Tokyo to Yokohama was only about 40 km long, Japan is over 2000 km end to end, and Morel, as an eminent railway engineer, must surely have realised that such a narrow gauge would hamper future railway development, especially as by now, in the 1870s, speed
s in other countries had already surpassed those achievable on anything less than Standard gauge, using the technology of the day.

  Whatever the true reasons, 1067 mm gauge was used for that first railway, in 1872, and this gauge thus became established as the national gauge for Japan’s railways. Is it a situation that Japan has come to rue, as we saw in Southern Africa’s case? Quite possibly, as will become apparent.

  The British not only sent over their expertise to Japan, in the form of Morel, but also supplied locomotives and rolling stock, and even the drivers (engineers) to operate them, as Japan had absolutely no capability of its own at that time in building locomotives and rolling stock, and then being able to run a railway.

  Throughout the remainder of the 19th century, railway construction and development proceeded in great strides, usually with private companies building and operating all the new lines – at one time there were nearly twenty of them. But all the new lines were built to 1067 mm gauge, and, while the Japanese army in the 1890s had become frustrated with the 1067 mm gauge in their efforts to invade Standard gauge China, there was no effort made to consider using Standard gauge until 1909.

  The Director-general of the Railway Department, Shinpei Goto, in that year advocated the reconstruction of Japan’s railways to Standard gauge. But while comprehensive plans were made for this conversion, with the ultimate goal of gradually converting Japan’s entire railways to Standard gauge, no actual work took place, apart from converting part of the line between Yokohama and Tokyo in 1917/18 to 1067/1435 mm dual gauge.

  By 1918, notwithstanding the fact that Japan was very aware of the disadvantages of a narrow gauge system in what was becoming a Standard gauge world, especially in China, for whatever reasons the Japanese Diet cancelled all further conversion programs. While there had been some apparent success with operating both Standard and narrow gauge trains over the same dual-gauge line (especially in successfully managing the complex switching arrangements at turnouts), by the 1930s, no further progress was made in introducing Standard gauge into Japan.

  In fact, Japan was toying with even narrower gauges. A huge number of railways were built using the very narrow gauge of 762 mm (2 ft 6 in) , especially for local services, and some of these survive today (see later). (Most, but not all, of these were converted to 1067 mm gauge by the mid twentieth century.)

  By this time, in the late 1930s, Japan had become more or less self-sufficient in being able to build steam railway locomotives – initially, like China, by blatantly copying American and European designs, but later using its own in-house technology. Perhaps the culmination of this increasing design capability was the ubiquitous D51 class 2-8-2 steam engine. Primarily a freight locomotive, and based on an earlier American Baldwin design, over 1100 copies were built between 1936 and 1950.

  They were incredibly powerful for such a narrow gauge, yet they were responsible for keeping Japan’s freight, troop movement and civilian passenger trains running during World War II, and for many years afterwards. The 2-8-2 wheel configuration was unique to Japan at the time (the Baldwin design which Japan used as a basis was a 2-8-0), and gave rise to the name ‘Mikado’ for this wheel arrangement.

  Within the next few years, in the late 1930s, it was again realised that 1067 mm gauge was hampering both railway development and Japan’s imperial ambitions, and that speeds would forever remain slow using this gauge, while Japanese Cape gauge trains could never venture on to Chinese Standard gauge tracks. Serious thought seems again to have been given to converting the Japanese railway system to Standard gauge. A number of plans were drawn up during this decade to implement that idea. In fact, some 1435 mm gauge lines were built in the late 1930s, primarily to enable Japan to realise its dream of invading more and more countries, starting with Standard gauge China – a dream that led to the Japan-China conflict in 1937 and subsequently Japan’s participation in World War II.

  As far as railways were concerned, that dream was intended to culminate in a Standard gauge rail line from Tokyo through Manchuria (via a train ferry over the sea) to Europe. The rather prescient name given to the idea of these Standard gauge lines that would enable higher speeds and more interchangeability with railways in other countries, especially China,was弾丸列車, or Bullet Train – a name that would of course appear again much later, though in much more peaceful circumstances.

  In 1940, another Standard gauge ‘Bullet train’ proposal was mooted, this time involving a line between Tokyo and Shimonoseki, with planned 200 km/h operation (a very high speed for that era), and ultimately the building of a tunnel under the sea to Korea, from which trains could travel on 1435 mm gauge rails to Beijing as the final destination.

  Japan’s defeat in World War II put a stop to that idea and all other ideas of invading other countries by means of Standard gauge railways, and indeed the country by all appearances gave up on the idea of converting its railways to Standard gauge. It spent the next two decades developing its narrow gauge system, including a huge electrification program, along with state-of-the-art (in their day) multiple-unit electric trains. But the idea of Standard gauge lines in Japan was far from dead.

  In 1964 Japan would be holding the Tokyo Olympics, and it was realised in 1957 that huge numbers of people would want to travel from the country’s second largest city, Osaka, to the capital. A high speed rail line was the obvious solution, but not at the prevailing Cape gauge – speeds would simply be far too low, and the trains too small, to carry the numbers of passengers envisaged.

  After briefly considering a number of gauges larger than 1067 mm (including the Indian sub-continent’s 1676 mm gauge), the decision was made to build a high speed line between Tokyo and Osaka to 1435 mm Standard gauge – the Shinkansen, or Bullet Train (as noted above, a term previously seen before WWII, but now given credence by the appearance of the trains themselves, akin to a bullet).

  After experimenting with the Odakyu Electric Railway 1067 mm gauge ‘Romancecar’ train that had achieved 145 km/h (a world record for this gauge until recently), in order to validate the use of 1435 mm gauge for much higher speeds, what was the first dedicated high speed line in the world was then built between the two cities, to Standard gauge.

  Operations started in October 1964, in time for the Olympics, and initially speeds were held at 210 km/h – not a particularly high speed for a dedicated Standard gauge high speed line (trains on ‘legacy’ lines in a number of countries routinely exceed that speed – see Part 1), but nonetheless significantly higher than – over double, in fact – anything previously seen in Japan in normal service, where 90 km/h had been the permitted maximum on 1067 mm gauge tracks.

  Since then, speeds have been progressively increased, until today, the Shinkansen is on a par with the TGV and ICE in Europe (at 320 km/h on some sections), although still slightly less than the fastest trains in China (see above), where 350 to 400 km/h is the top speed in regular service.

  Currently the Tokyo to Osaka Shinkansen is the most heavily used railway in the world, with 300 km/h trains, each capable of carrying over 1300 passengers, leaving every three minutes – quite phenomenal. These trains are to quite a large loading gauge (in terms of both their width and height), and comfortably seat five abreast.

  Since its inception over 50 years ago, the Shinkansen network has carried over six billion people – nearly the entire world’s population.

  Main-line railways:

  Today, Japan has an enormous network of ‘legacy’ railways, totalling over 20 000 km, two thirds of which is electrified, while the Shinkansen network now extends to 3200 km. As mentioned above, almost all of the ‘legacy’ lines are to 1067 mm gauge, yet, notwithstanding this relatively small gauge, trains in Japan carry huge numbers of people, albeit at relatively low speeds. So is Japan, like much of Africa, resigned to living with Cape gauge, possibly forever? Perhaps not.

  I mentioned above that there had already been plans in the 1930s to build Standard gauge lines in Japan to facilitate Japan’s war
plans. There was also a line built in the early 1950s between Iriuda and Gora. The section between Iriuda and Hakone-Yumoto was built to dual gauge; that between Odawara and Iriuda was built to 1067 mm gauge; and that between Hakone-Yumoto and Gora was built to Standard gauge.

  The whole length of this line was however just 15 km, and in fact the Standard gauge (and 1435 mm rails of the dual gauge) sections were stopped being used in 2006. It again looks as if Standard gauge, other than the Shinkansen, will remain a dream. Or will it?

  To enable the Shinkansen to travel, on occasion, over normal rails, a few small sections of the JNR system are built to dual 1067/1435 mm gauge, or even converted solely to 1435 mm gauge, such as the Ou Line. This converted ‘legacy’ line now allows Standard gauge Shinkansen trains to travel between Yamagata and Fukushima.

  Another section of Japan’s railways built to dual 1067/1435 mm gauge is the Seikan Tunnel, connecting the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido, and opened in 1988. One of the longest undersea tunnels in the world, it stretches a total of 54 km, at a depth of 100 m below the sea bed (and over 300 m below sea level – that is deep!). It was decided from the outset to build it to permit full-size Standard gauge Shinkansen trains to use the tunnel at some point, although only 1067-mm gauge track was laid initially. Dual gauge track was laid in 2005.

  But these examples of Standard or dual gauge track may be only the tip of the iceberg. The Yamagata Shinkansen, as well as the Akita Shinkansen, are what are have been termed Mini-Shinkansen – ‘legacy’ lines converted to 1435 mm gauge to permit the through running of Bullet trains between various Shinkansen lines. As these ‘legacy’ lines follow existing alignments, and are constrained by existing loading gauges, they do not permit the same high speeds that the full-blown dedicated Shinkansen achieve.