Thread: Japan Railway company apology

Originally Posted by trog

If that wasn't the truth , the article could have made the jokes thread. Maybe the rail operators should get a couple of these guys over to get the trains running even half as good.

Never going to happen, they are WAY ahead of us.

Originally Posted by Gordie

hehe Japan certainly doesn't share our 'close enough is good enough' attitude eh! Although I am quite glad...that's a bit anal.

I have been a rail enthusiast all my life and followed rail operations in Europe, North America, and Australia and NZ, but I was never that interested in Asian rail systems.


This is till about 12 months ago.


My wife was flicking around channels of Austar and came across a railway show. It was on the Japanese English news channel ( 656 ) and she told me it was on if i was interested.


So I change over and watched it. Well while it was very professional, was also some what childish the way it was presented, I have both gotten use to it and actually find it quite easy to watch, but WOW.


I am totally addicted to these docs. There is usually one railway doc most weekends and on some weekends, there are two.


On most Fridays, there is an episode of a series called Japan Railway Journal, which usually covers specific aspects of the Japanese railways, and runs for about 25 to 30 minutes and then on many of the weekends on either Saturday or Sunday, there is an episode of another series called Train Cruise, and is pretty well what the name implies.


If you are the slightest bit interested in railways, these shows are brilliant. And they are mostly only a few days to a week or two since they were made.


For instance, this weeks episode of JRJ was about monorails. Japan has more monorails than any other country and has more mileage, 110kms.


These are not the toys we had here, the 14km monorail from one of the airports to the centre of Tokyo carries 45 million passengers a year while a suburban network further south carries 50 million a year.


Anyway Geordie, back to your comment about them being anal.


On many of the local lines, the rail cars have a glass divide between the passengers and the drivers cab, so you can see out the front. On many of the episodes they show views looking out the front and often you can see the driver.


They all ware white gloves and they continually point at what they are going to do. Like if they are going to look at a dash display, they point at it. If they are going to operate a switch, they point at it first, then they operate it, and when the look back out the front of the cab they point at it.


Talk about brain washed, or so I thought!


About two months ago, they had an episode of JRJ at one of the two high schools, dedicated to training students who are planning on having a railway career.


During the show, they showed students operating a locomotive simulator and the commentator explained why they are tort to point at everything they intend to do.


By pointing at what ever they are going to do, increases their concentration and this dramatically reduces the chances of making a mistake or having an accident.


But it’s still anal and why I posted it’s never going to happen here.


Here is a short video of one of the monorails. NOTE, it is not the video that makes the monorail cars look thin and tall, that’s how they are.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rN5LuFR2pTU

Originally Posted by drivesafe

On many of the local lines, the rail cars have a glass divide between the passengers and the drivers cab, so you can see out the front. On many of the episodes they show views looking out the front and often you can see the driver.

From a drivers point of view, those glass divides are a terrible thing, nothing worse than having people staring at you all day long, especially 'the enthusiasts' staring at everything you do. And from a welfare perspective, not good when passengers can witness an incident occur, bad enough that a driver has to be the last one to see someone take their last breath, not nice if a kiddie is sitting up front looking out.

Originally Posted by Wraithe

Who said it would be one service a day... 20 minutes apart, it would connect all capitals, and multiple trains.. split the timetables...But anyway, wont happen in my lifetime...

As for QR and Vline bot being able to organise anything, that applies to all Australian railways...
Look at the line from WA to SA, could have been double track by now, they have had to lay lots of bypasses when they have track problems, why not 2 tracks all the way, same as Darwins line...

You need to think ahead about these things, our gov only thinks about there payday...

Exactly!
Not that long ago, maybe two years or less, they completely overhauled the line to Mildura, sleepers, ballast, the works.
Now they are going over it again changing the gauge from broad to standard.

Cheers, Mick.

Originally Posted by mick88

Exactly!
Not that long ago, maybe two years or less, they completely overhauled the line to Mildura, sleepers, ballast, the works.
Now they are going over it again changing the gauge from broad to standard.

Cheers, Mick.

Bit like there 30 or 33 degree temp rule...

If that applied here in WA, trains would only run in the mid of winter... Imagine that rule in the pilbara, we would need the camel trains back and load them with bags of ore...

There is no commonsense when it comes to government committees or appointed government officials...

Perfect example of that was our water supply in parts of the wheatbelt... Ernire Bridge came into power as water minister, was approached about the water supply to Nyabing, it had been promised about 20 years before... He was informed that feasibility studies had shown it was not profitible.. He asked what they cost the gov, apparently about 4 million for the 3 done, so he told water authority to supply an engineer and the materials, towns people would provide labour... It cost 500,000 and was completed 4 times faster than the water authority works at... He also went and helped, himself, every weekend and continued the line to Pingrup...

The thing is, Ernie owned cattle stations and his philosophy was to provide water to stock then worry about what it cost as the stock needed it, better to pay for a pipe than not have the stock at all...

Originally Posted by Wraithe

Bit like there 30 or 33 degree temp rule...

If that applied here in WA, trains would only run in the mid of winter... Imagine that rule in the pilbara, we would need the camel trains back and load them with bags of ore...

There is no commonsense when it comes to government committees or appointed government officials...

Perfect example of that was our water supply in parts of the wheatbelt... Ernire Bridge came into power as water minister, was approached about the water supply to Nyabing, it had been promised about 20 years before... He was informed that feasibility studies had shown it was not profitible.. He asked what they cost the gov, apparently about 4 million for the 3 done, so he told water authority to supply an engineer and the materials, towns people would provide labour... It cost 500,000 and was completed 4 times faster than the water authority works at... He also went and helped, himself, every weekend and continued the line to Pingrup...

The thing is, Ernie owned cattle stations and his philosophy was to provide water to stock then worry about what it cost as the stock needed it, better to pay for a pipe than not have the stock at all...

Smart, Intelligent, and Practically thinking man.
We could do with a few like that in Canberra today.

Cheers, Mick.

Originally Posted by mick88

Smart, Intelligent, and Practically thinking man.
We could do with a few like that in Canberra today.

Cheers, Mick.

What if they are dual citizens?

Originally Posted by trog

What if they are dual citizens?

Ernie Bridge is a black fella...

The only dual thing about him is his race... aboriginal and pomm...

Thankfully he still had Aboriginal ideas of looking after the family and his family was the WA people...

But he got run down by most of the idiots that wanted some dual citizen polly in there instead...

Mind you, if he was in charge the railway network, we could have gone to Darwin via Broome, by train...

Well we got an apology on the speakers on QR this morning for the train running "slightly late".

We were sitting at the station for 25 minutes....