New Trains For Yokohama Metro

On 30 March 2022, the new EMU for Yokohama Municipal Subway (Yokohama Shiei Chikatetsu in Japanese) was introduced. The operator has ordered eight six-car Class 4000 trains which are about to run on Yokohama’s Blue Line. The Kawasaki-built 1,435 mm gauge 750 V DC third-rail powered trains are formed of four powered intermediate cars and two non-powered end cars.

End cars have a length of 18,540 mm, the intermediate ones of 18,000 mm, a bodyshell width is 2,760 mm and a height is 3,535 mm over TOR. The end cars weight 30 t and 30.5 t, the powered car’s weight varies between 32.5 and 34 t. Each powered car has four 140 kW asynchronous traction motors, giving the train an acceleration of 3.2 m/s², a deceleration of 3.5 m/s². An emergency brake deceleration is 4.5 m/s². The train offers a total capacity of 524 passengers of which 258 can be seated.

The first Class 4000 EMU is scheduled to start commercial operation on 2 May 2022, in total five trains will be introduced during 2022 and three more in 2023, which will gradually replace the older Class 3000 and 3000A trains.

The 40.4 km Blue Line is the second longest metro line in Japan. In fact it is divided into two operating segments and it serves Yokohama and Kanazawa prefectures (both part of Great Tokyo area). There are both local (all stop) services and rapid services which pass most of stations in central part of the Blue Line.