Welcome to Sunday Matinee, where we highlight classic car reviews or other longer videos I find on YouTube. Kick back and enjoy this blast from the past.
Building a bullet train isn't as simple as building a regular train and throwing a bigger engine in it. Building a regular train, for that matter, isn't simple at all. So why not let Richard Hammond explain it?
Japan's bullet trains are famous the world over for connecting large swaths of the country very quickly, very efficiently, and very much on time. That's in a nation that's bisected by mountains, and occasionally hit with earthquakes. So it's not like it's easy at all. To create the bullet train system, Japanese engineers needed to rely upon years of experience and technology to build the incredible system they have today.
If you've ever been on a high-speed train, it's an experience you won't soon forget. The countryside tends to speed by at warp speed, while you simply sit and hum along smoothly. Finding out what makes them tick doesn't make it any less of an engineering miracle, to me.
Now if only we could get them here in America.