TOKYO — It’s likely some of the tens-of-thousands of passengers were hissing with madness after a snake brought Japan’s busiest bullet train line to a halt.
The slippery 39-inch reptile slithered onto an overhead power line and tangled itself, a spokesperson for line operator, JR Central, told NBC News. As a result, it shorted the electricity supply and brought the line between Osaka and Tokyo to a halt.
The blackout occurred at 5:26 p.m. (4:26 a.m. ET) and power was not restored until 7 p.m. (6 a.m. ET), affecting 86 trains, the spokesperson said.
Every day more than 430,000 passengers ride the Tokaido Shinkansen, a key Japanese railway artery that connects its capital Tokyo with Nagoya and Osaka, according to JR Central.
The bullet trains are known for their speed at 180 miles an hour, and also their punctuality and the average delay time on the line was 1.6 minutes per train last year, across the 372 trains it operated each day.
“I use the shinkansen several times a month, but this is the first time I have experienced suspensions due to a power outage,” one passenger Satoshi Tagawa, 46, who was due to return to Tokyo, told the local news outlet Kyodo News.
“I am relieved,” said 26-year-old Kazutoshi Tachi, after learning that services had resumed. “But I am fed up with the troubles (with shinkansen services). I want them to run on time.”
Snakes making their way onto Shinkansen lines is rare, though it’s not the first time this has happened. Last year, a 16-inch snake crawled its way onto a passenger carriage on a train along the Tokyo-Nagoya line.
The JR Central spokesperson said they had no idea how it got into the carriage.
Arata Yamamoto reported from Tokyo and Mithil Aggarwal reported from Hong Kong.
