COVER STORY：REPORTExploring Rail’s Future with Technology Inherited from the PastOne-Hundred-Year History of Hitachi’s Kasado Works

Early Days of Kasado Works

Kasado Works celebrated its 100th anniversary in May 2021. As a part of Hitachi, Ltd.’s Railway Systems Business Unit, it is involved in the production of rolling stock, from designing to manufacturing. Having split off from the Kuhara Mining Company in 1920, Hitachi acquired the Kasado shipyards of Nihon Kisen Co., Ltd. and commenced the production of steam locomotives and other rolling stock at the site, which is located in Kudamatsu, a city in Yamaguchi Prefecture. At that time, the Ministry of Railways was looking to electrify the Tokaido Line, planning to place orders for electric locomotives exclusively from overseas suppliers. Instead, Hitachi set out to develop its own large electric locomotives. This development presented a series of difficulties for Hitachi as its past experience had been limited to the manufacture of small electric locomotives used in mines. After countless processes of trial and error, however, Hitachi successfully completed its first prototype in 1924. The new locomotive was tested at the Ministry of Railways’ Omiya Factory and put through a series of test runs on the actual track, ultimately entering service on the Tokaido Line as the Class ED15 electric locomotive. By producing various types of rolling stock, Kasado Works has been contributing to a number of people traveling with this form of transportation ever since.

0 series Shinkansen

Rolling Stock Produced in Kasado

Kasado Works has produced a wide variety of rolling stock, from high-speed trains to commuter trains, over the hundred years of its history. Among those, perhaps the most well-known of all is the Shinkansen. The construction of the Tokaido Shinkansen line commenced in 1959 with a target speed of 200 km/h, which was the fastest in the world at that time. Hitachi completed a prototype in 1962 and went on to deliver 214 “0 series Shinkansen” rolling stock by 1970, with a reputation for high quality gained on a test track. The Shinkansen continued to evolve with series design changes, providing people with a form of transportation that is both comfortable and environmentally friendly.

Meanwhile, some of the rolling stock models are still around, retaining their appearance from the past. Toward the end of the Meiji Era, the Tetsudoin Railway Authority (which subsequently became Japanese National Railways) introduced the new Class 8620 steam locomotives, designed based on large locomotives like the Class 8800 imported from the USA and some European nations such as the UK, Germany, etc. The development of Class 8620 had the purpose of playing a great role in establishing the technology for domestic locomotive production. Having as yet little experience in the industry, Kasado Works couldn’t win any orders from the Ministry of Railways at first. Following negotiations with Tetsudoin, however, it successfully built its own Class 8620 locomotive based on borrowed manufacturing plans and this in turn led to new orders. One of the Class 8620 locomotives that has been preserved in working condition is the number 58654 built at Kasado Works in 1922. This venerable old steam locomotive can still be seen at shows and other events courtesy of Kyushu Railway Company, celebrating its 99th birthday in 2021.

Monorail is another type of rolling stock that represents Kasado Works’ achievement. Since first licensing technology from Alweg, a firm in the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1960, Hitachi has gone on to develop its own monorails for urban transportation, with the Inuyama Monorail in 1962, two years after it started the production of monorails, and the Tokyo Monorail between Haneda Airport and Hamamatsucho in 1964. The cars for the Inuyama Monorail were also the first Hitachi railway rolling stock to be made from aluminum.

This was followed by the Kitakyushu Monorail opening as an urban mass transit system in 1985, the Osaka Monorail in 1990, the Tama Toshi Monorail in 1998, and the Okinawa Monorail in 2003. Kasado Works has also developed a driverless automatic train operation (ATO) system and functioned in the supply of monorails outside Japan, including the Palm Jumeirah Monorail in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in 2009 and the No. 3 monorail line for the Daegu Metropolitan Transit Corporation in the Republic of Korea in 2015. Production work is now underway in partnership with other production divisions on the development of a newly ordered monorail for the Republic of Panama.

Environmentally Friendly Manufacturing

Kasado Works has been working to improve the efficiency of its energy and resource use over recent years by upgrading its rolling stock manufacturing processes as part of the environmental measures to address concerns like climate change. A notable example is “the A-train” made from lightweight aluminum, a material with excellent recycling properties. The amount of electricity consumed in the production of each rolling stock has been reduced by 46% as a result of adopting friction stir welding, a technique that requires less heat than past practices.

Kasado Works also put emphasis on saving and reusing the necessary resources during the manufacturing process. For instance, the head shapes of high-speed trains were specially designed to minimize air resistance: Here, the adoption of a high-speed cutting technique that achieves a smooth exterior finish has reduced consumption of the putty used to fill in bumps and undulations by 89%, with use of the chemicals contained in paint also having been cut considerably. Additionally, Kasado Works achieved 100% recycling of water used on site in testing the waterproofing of carbodies, and managed to ensure almost all of the waste was reused by carefully sorting it, with only 0.1% going to landfill as of 2013.

Class 800 rolling stock being transported through Kudamatsu (top left) and Kentaro Masai, Hitachi Vice President and Executive Officer, shaking hands with city mayor Masuo Kunii in front of one of the trains (bottom right)

Growing toward Worldwide Rolling Stock Manufacturing Plants

Hitachi has expanded its railway systems business from its base in Japan to numerous countries and regions, including Australia, North and South Americas, Africa, Asia, and so on. More recently, Hitachi has also established production facilities overseas, starting in 2015 with a plant at Newton Aycliffe in the UK, the nation known as the birthplace of the railway industry. It has also expanded its presence globally by welcoming Ansaldo Breda S.p.A (now Hitachi Rail S.p.A) and Ansaldo STS S.p.A (now Hitachi Rail STS S.p.A) to the group. Along with Kasado Works, these plants work day-in and day-out on manufacturing rolling stock for use around the world. Kasado Works has recently been working with the Newton Aycliffe Manufacturing Facility on the Class 800 high-speed train for the UK. It was hailed as a great achievement to have executed the transportation of the completed Class 800 rolling stock through the city from the plant to the docks for loading onto ships.

Drawing on its past successes and the experience built up over its 100-year history as well as the reliable skills that have been handed down over time, Hitachi’s Kasado Works will continue supporting the world’s railway systems through the manufacture of safe and comfortable trains.