According to a recent report, Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) will replace 336 of the double-paned windows on the doors of Nozomi 700 series Shinkansen trains because tempered glass may have been…
According to a recent report, Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) will replace 336 of the double-paned windows on the doors of Nozomi 700 series Shinkansen trains because tempered glass may have been used on the exterior of the door rather than the interior due to a manufacturer“s error. Double-paned windows on doors of the Nozomi 700 train, the company“s latest Shinkansen model, are supposed to comprise a six-millimetre-thick tempered glass pane on the door“s interior and a three-millimetre-thick regular glass pane on the exterior. However, the placement of the two types of glass apparently was switched due to the mislabelling of the windowpanes by Asahi Glass Co., which manufactured the panes. This is believed to be the first large-scale replacement of Shinkansen windowpanes resulting from a manufacturer“s error. According to JR Tokai, a crack was discovered on one of the exterior windows of a door of the 14th car of the Nozomi No. 15 service that left Tokyo for Shin-Hakata Station on 12 November. JR officials noticed the crack had spread outward because the exterior pane was made from tempered glass. There is a possibility that the glass manufacturer may have incorrectly labelled door windows for 86 Nozomi 700 series trains. JR Tokai and Asahi Glass tried to determine whether the windows had been installed correctly. However, due to the difficulty of determining at a glance the type of glass used, JR Tokai decided to replace all windowpanes manufactured by Asahi Glass. The firm has already ordered new windowpanes from Asahi Glass, but it is expected to take more than a month to replace all windows on the doors of the 86 trains. JR Tokai and Asahi Glass will negotiate over how to divide the cost of replacing the windowpanes. The Nozomi 700 series, which debuted in March, was jointly developed by JR Tokai and West Japan Railway Co. JR Tokai operates 176 trains in the series.