High-speed route
Sanyo Shinkansen
Osaka → Fukuoka · Japan
Sanyo Shinkansen in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 553 km
- Fastest time
- 2 h 21 min
- Average speed
- 235 km/h
- Top speed
- 300 km/h
- Operator
- JR West
- Train
- N700S · N700A
- Countries
- Japan
- In service since
- 1975
- Runs
- every 10–20 min; Nozomi up to 3× hourly
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
The Inland Sea corridor past Himeji Castle and Hiroshima, and the home turf of the needle-nosed 500 Series.
Completed through to Hakata in 1975, this is the racing straight of the Japanese network: long tunnels under the Chūgoku hills alternating with viaduct dashes past shipyards, oyster rafts and sudden flashes of the Inland Sea. The fastest services hold 300 km/h between stops before diving under the Kanmon Strait to enter Kyushu at Kokura. Through Mizuho and Sakura trains off the Kyushu line join the parade, so the corridor hums with departures from early till late.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 9807033 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 97.7% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 5 m); the longest stretch away from it is 9.5 km
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: JR West — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Shin-Kōbe under Mt. Rokkō
- Himeji Castle from the viaduct
- Seto Inland Sea glimpses
- Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
- Kanmon Strait crossing to Kyushu
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