# 1/3 of Hokuriku Shinkansen trains submerged from Typhoon Hagibis 10/12/19



## Rover (Oct 13, 2019)

10:24

East Japan Railway Company says one-third of its bullet trains used for the Hokuriku Shinkansen line have been damaged by flooding.

JR East says water entered a facility in Akanuma in Nagano Prefecture, central Japan. The Shinkansen carriage center is used to repair or store bullet trains.

Company officials say 10 trains, with a total of 120 carriages, have been confirmed damaged.

The damaged ones include eight E7 series trains and two W7 series trains, out of the 30 used for the Hokuriku line.

The officials say there are no prospects for the time being of fully resuming service on the Hokuriku line. They say they may have to restart operation with fewer trains.

The center is located 10 kilometers northeast of JR Nagano Station and on the west side of the Chikuma River, which overflowed after Typhoon Hagibis hit the area on Saturday.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20191013_54/

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/live/

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/10/13/national/typhoon-hagibis-japan-tokyo/#.XaLY0397nb0


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## Anderson (Oct 13, 2019)

"Ok, who hired New Jersey Transit to handle the disaster planning?"


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## me_little_me (Oct 18, 2019)

Amtrak can offer its "high speed" new Diners to the Japanese. They can always fill them with sandbags to stop any new flooding.


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## Rover (Nov 12, 2019)

*All 10 typhoon-flooded shinkansen bullet trains to be scrapped*

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/...-shinkansen-bullet-trains-to-be-scrapped.html

TOKYO - All 10 Hokuriku Shinkansen bullet trains that were inundated in central Japan last month by floods triggered by Typhoon Hagibis will be scrapped due to severe damage, railway operators said.

East Japan Railway Co. owns eight of the 10, while the remaining two belong to West Japan Railway Co. The trains, totaling 120 cars, accounted for a third of the Hokuriku Shinkansen fleet and were flooded while parked at a train yard in Nagano city when the nearby Chikuma River burst its banks on Oct. 13.

JR East President Yuji Fukusawa told a news conference on Wednesday, "Some of the train components can be reused, but for stability and safety we have concluded it would be appropriate to replace the trains with newly built ones instead of repairing them."

JR East said it will carefully examine which train parts can be reused before deciding on the total amount to report as a special loss for the fiscal year ending March 2020. The book value of JR East's eight E7-series bullet trains totaled 11.8 billion yen as of the end of September.

Meanwhile, JR West said it plans to book a special loss of 3 billion yen for the fiscal year for its two W7-series bullet trains to be scrapped.


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## Anderson (Nov 12, 2019)

So, 11.8bn yen equals somewhere in the ballpark of $100-120m. Divided by eight sets and that's $12.5-15m/set for twelve-car sets. Granted, there's five years of depreciation on them from use and there's scrap value, but...damn, that's _cheap _compared to (say) the cost of a batch of Brightliners.


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## Anderson (Nov 13, 2019)

Just as a follow-up, but the loss in question may have been somewhat larger but mostly covered by insurance. I've gotten a figure of about 3x the amount above from another source (which also totals something like 3-4% of the total damage done by the storm). Even so, that's something like a hair over a third of the cost of the new Acela sets (and not far off of the cost for the Brightliner sets).


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