JAPAN: JR Kyushu President & CEO Toshihiko Aoyagi announced in Fukuoka on April 28 that the 66 km high speed line from Takeo Onsen to Nagasaki is to be known as the Nishi-Kyushu Shinkansen.
Nishi means ‘west’, and he explained that the name had been chosen to give the line a local identity and distinguish it from the existing Kyushu Shinkansen which links Hakata with Kagoshima.
Aoyagi confirmed that the new line is on course to open in the autumn of 2022. It will initially be isolated from the rest of Japan’s 1 435 mm gauge high speed network, with the 54 km gap between Takeo Onsen and Shin-Tosu on the Kyushu Shinkansen filled by 1 067 mm gauge Limited Express ‘relay’ services. Journey time from Hakata to Nagasaki including changing trains will be 1 h 12 min.
The new line will have 31 tunnels with a combined length of more than 40 km. Another 21 km will run on bridges and viaducts, leaving just 5∙3 km at grade. All civil engineering work had been completed by July 1 last year.
Services are to be operated by a fleet of six-car derivatives of the Series N700S that JR Central uses on the Tokaido Shinkansen. These will be branded Kamome, meaning ‘seagull’.
JR Kyushu had originally planned to run gauge-convertible high speed EMUs between Hakata and Nagasaki that would bridge the gauge gap between Shin-Tosu and Takeo Onsen, but trials with three different prototypes between 1998 and 2017 were ultimately unsuccessful. The third prototype reportedly suffered axle damage during endurance testing and the experiment was dropped, at least for the time being.
At present, the best journey time between Hakata and Nagasaki is 114 min by Kamome Limited Express services with seven intermediate stops. Construction of a new 1 435 mm gauge line between Shin-Tosu and Takeo Onsen would cut the end-to end journey time for the 143 km from Hakata to Nagasaki to just 41 min.
