Track Maintenance Methods for Speedup of Shinkansen

Hideyuki TAKAI, Youichi SUNAGA, Kunio TAKESHITA
Shinkansen started to run at a speed of 210 km/h in 1964. Recently, the speed has been raised up to 275 km/h on special section of Joetsu Shinkansen line and 300-series Shinkansen trains named "Nozomi" have come to run at 270 km/h on Tokaido and San-yo Shinkansen. For these operations, track engineers strengthened track structure and improved accuracy of track alignment. Speedup of Shinkansen is and will be the main target of Shinkansen operation. JR companies built ultra-high speed testing trains and continue their test-run aiming for 300 km/h or higher operation. We review some problems and results of research and development in the field of track maintenance to realize 300 km/h operation.