Word: tokaido
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Across paddyfields, through mountains and over highways last week streaked the world's fastest long-haul train, slithering like an ivory worm along the 320 miles of rail between Tokyo and Osaka. For the first full test run of Japan's $1 billion New Tokaido Line, the super-express Hikari averaged 80 m.p.h. and often went as high as 125 m.p.h. Crowds waved and cheered, highway traffic stopped to watch, and planes of newsmen circled overhead. Japan was greeting not only a new rail service but a symbol of the nation's postwar industrial growth...
...glistening 22-mile stretch of railroad south of Tokyo one day last week, Engineer Morio Yamamoto opened his throttle for a test high-speed run on the New Tokaido Line. Almost imperceptibly, Yamamoto's electric locomotive purred into power, skimmed like an arrow past paddyfields and rolling hills. Smiling with satisfaction, a Japanese National Railways executive announced to invited passengers that the train was moving at its programmed speed of 200 kilometers an hour (124 m.p.h.). "Nothing to it at all," beamed Yamamoto...
When it opens full service on the 320-mile run between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964, the New Tokaido will be the world's fastest train. Bullet-shaped locomotives will whip 108 passenger trains daily over twelve miles of bridges, through 40 miles of tunnel and around gentle curves at speeds averaging 105 m.p.h. This is considered too fast for human engineers; computers will control the trains most of the way, with speeds and slowdowns for stops programmed on tape. Running time will be cut to three hours, from 6½ hours on the parallel Old Tokaido Line...