The final programme in this series features the Tokaido Shinkansen

• Sun 12 Jun 2011 – 18:10 BBC Two + BBC HD
• Mon 13 Jun 2011 – 23:20 BBC Two + BBC HD
• Tue 14 Jun 2011 – 00:20 BBC Two (Northern Ireland only)

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0121l52

Richard Hammond reveals the surprising engineering connections in Japan’s Bullet Train, the world’s first high-speed train. It could not run without ancient charioteers, a crowbar, a medieval clock, the electric telegraph, and a 19th-century luxury racing car.

Nearly 50 years old, the Bullet Train is still pioneering new high-speed technology. Richard builds his own train to show how engineers reinvented the train wheel to prevent it violently shaking at its top speeds of close to 200 mph (300 kph). Things start to heat up when he visits a high voltage lab to find out how engineers eliminated the danger of 10,000 degrees electrical arcs by devising an ingeniously levered pantograph – the connection between the train and the overhead power lines. Next they made the train light to maximise acceleration, but as Richard finds out on a skid pan, this created a slippery problem only solved thanks to the world’s first four-wheel-drive car – the Lohner Porsche. Obviously four driven wheels were not enough for a Bullet Train – so engineers made it a 112-wheel-drive.

At such incredible speeds, it is hard to stay on track round bends. Richard charges off in a carriage to see how the ancient charioteers did it – and on the Bullet Train, they use the same principle – leaning into bends. Not only is the track banked, but the train itself leans. And finally, using a cubed car and a lake, Richard learns how the electric telegraph is the key to keeping the Bullet Train safe in a country hit by 1,500 earthquakes a year. The Bullet Train is protected by the world’s most sophisticated earthquake detection system that can stop trains automatically within seconds, to avoid high-speed derailment.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0121l52