Nagoya: Trains

Nagoya is also home to the Super Conducting MagLev and Railway park

Which contains a series of trains

along with the aforementioned SCMAGLEV

This is a sceen showing all of the trains running between Tokyo
and Kyoto at any given time. Madness! 

The evolving shape of the front of the Shinkansen

Rail gauges. Fascinating.

This is a model of the machine they use to replace the rails.
It weaves the new ones under the old ones. Sorcery! 

Dr Yellow. The famous train that monitors the condition
of the tracks as it drive along.

Trains!

In a train park!

There is a n500 driving simulator.

It costs $5 to have a go, but you need to enter a lottery to be
allowed to buy a ticket. Too popular I guess.

There is a model train setup.

A lot of detail.

But the trains don't move, so it's actually pretty lame.

until you realise that every so often they turn the lights in the room off

everything lights up, and then the trains do run.

There are also some seasonal pieces that they seem to swap out
at various points of the year, such as this spring piece.

or this Christmas one

This educational piece about why train wheels are the shape they are suffers
from the fact that none of the sets of wheels make it all the way around

Children's play area

The earliest MagLev test train

later models

the current design

So, it turns out that neither of us won the lottery to go on the shinkansen driver simulator.

We did win the other lottery, which was also a simulator. Just not a driver simulator.

These are long, but click here to watch 6 minutes of me passing conductor school with flying colours.

Or click here to watch Emma fail to make the grade, as she forgets announcements and, I suspect had the simulation allowed it, crushes someone in the automatic doors.

Oh well, every child gets a prize.

Or in this case a certificate saying you probably shouldn't be allowed on
even as a passenger, just to be sure...