207 series (JR West)

The 207 series is a Japanese electric multiple unit operated by the West Japan Railway Company since April 1991. This train is not to be confused with the 207 series built for JR East in 1986; both trains are unrelated apart from designations.
==History==
As the first train designed by JR West after JNR was privatized, the first 207 series set, seven-car set F1, was delivered in 1991 and began service on 30 April 1991 on the Katamachi Line. More cars were delivered in the following years. Production ended in 2003 as focus had shifted to the then-upcoming 321 series which would enter service in 2005.
==Design==
The 207 series adopted a modern design language which would be carried on onto more modern trains used by JR West, such as the 321 series.
==Specifications==
Construction is of stainless steel. Each car is 20 meters long. As of 2018, the 207 series use a variety of variable frequency drives, such as a variable frequency drive making use of a combination of thyristor choppers and a three-level power transistor manufactured by Mitsubishi, gate turn-off thyristor variable frequency drives manufactured by Toshiba or insulated gate bipolar transistor variable frequency drives manufactured by various companies, such as two types by Toshiba or Mitsubishi.
Some variants of the IGBT drives manufactured by Toshiba seem to have a hybrid of GTO and IGBT elements in it, making for a very unique cadence, while another made by Mitsubishi produces what seems to be a very loud screeching noise.
The 207 series is equipped with a musical horn which is standard on most of JR West's commuter fleet.
==Incidents==
On 25 April 2005, four-car set Z16 and three-car set S18 coupled in a seven-car formation were involved in an accident, dubbed the Amagasaki rail crash, the most serious train-related incident in Japan since the Tsurumi rail accident in 1963 and the fifth-deadliest train crash in Japan as of 2024. All cars of Z16 and one car of S18 derailed and were later scrapped. There were 107 fatalities and 562 casualties; all fatalities came from Z16, with the vast majority coming from the first two cars and the remainder from the third.
Around 9:19am JST, the two sets derailed around a curve on the Fukuchiyama Line, with Z16 leading. All cars of Z16 derailed, with car 1 ramming into the parking lot of an apartment building, car 2 colliding into the external wall of the same building and was almost completely compacted by cars 3 and 4, which were pushed from the rear by car 5, the first car of S18. Most survivors and witnesses to this incident state the train was traveling at an unusually high speed.
According to the JTSB and in their final report published in 2007, they concluded the probable cause was by 23-year-old driver Ryūjirō Takami (who was among the dead) as being the most likely cause of the derailment; twenty-five minutes before the derailment, Takami ran a red light which caused the automatic train stop system of set Z16 to bring it to a halt. The train, on service 4469M, pulled into Takarazuka station 44 seconds late and would leave Takarazuka as 5418M 15 seconds late. This delay at Takarazuka and the influx of passengers at Kawanishi Ikeda would stretch the delay from 15 seconds to 34 seconds. Four minutes before the derailment, Takami overran the platform at Itami Station, which resulted in a 90-second delay. Further investigations would reveal Takami received a reprimand for overrunning a station platform by 100 meters ten months before the incident in May 2004, 3 weeks after becoming a driver; he had been on a nikkin kyōiku, a form of harsh disciplinary retraining, for eighteen months for his eleven-month period as a driver.
It is quite likely that at the time of the incident, Takami sped up to make up for lost time by increasing the speed of the consist to 120 km/h (75 mph) on a 70 km/h (43 mph) section of the line. It is also quite likely that at the time of the incident, he was not completely focused on driving as he was more worried about what punishment he would face if he were found out. Contributing to the accident was that in 1997 JR West modified the curve from 600 to 304 metres for a better connection into Osaka. It was around this time the timetables were overhauled and the JR Fukuchiyama Line became one of tightest scheduled lines on the network, cutting down train waiting times to about 28 seconds. The nikkin kyōiku staff retraining method was also overhauled after significant criticism following the incident. The incident still takes a prominent place on the homepage of JR West's website.
==References==
*Wikipedia.org
Category:JR Group trains
Category:Electric trainsets
Category:Hitachi locomotives
Category:Kawasaki locomotives
Category:Kinki Sharyo locomotives
Category:Gotō Works locomotives