Development of Overhead Catenary System for Projected Shinkansen

Abstract

For Projected Shinkansen, it is necessary to develop an economical overhead catenary system allowing stable train operation at high-speed and meeting the transport demands. In order to develop a new overhead catenary system for this purpose, we designed a high tension simple catenary system with CS contact wire (Copper contact wire with Steel-core), and constructed this system on Tohoku Shinkansen line for operation test. During 4 years, we measured contact loss of pantograph, uplift and stress of contact wire, its maintainability including the wear of contact wire, and others. The test results so far obtained prove that its performance is as high as that of high-tension heavy compound catenary system. © 1996, The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. All rights reserved.