1 October 2004 is the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Tokaido Shinkansen, the world’s first high-speed railway that marked the start of the era of high-speed rail travel. Ten years ago, the October issue of JRTR 3 published a special feature entitled 30 Years of High Speed Railways. This article summarizes the events in highspeed railways in the last 10 years and discusses their future p...