JR East E5 U47Omiya Eki Saitama Omiya Eki

Today morning at around 11:30, two Shinkansen bullet trains running between Ueno and Omiya stations in Tokyo became separated while travelling at about 60 km/h. Trains involved in the incident were Hayabusa and Komachi H5+E6 set. Services on Tohoku Shinkansen were disrupted for about three hours as a result. However, there was similar incident in September of last year, when E5+E6 trains decoupled while travelling at high speed. Because of those incidents, JR East announced it will suspend all coupled Shinkansen operations until the cause is identified. Incidents like these are rare on Japanese high-speed railways and are taken very seriously and investigated thoroughly.