60 years ago, the ‘bullet train’ first ran on Japan’s newly built East Coast Tōkaidō Shinkansen line. In celebration, a nose cone from one of the first trains has just gone on display at Japan House in London. I’m not sure I’ll go and see it, but news of the exhibition did make me ponder.

When the Tōkaidō Shinkansen line opened in 1964, trains ran at a maximum of 130mph—faster than Britain’s East Coat Mainline, but not by all that much. Our (diesel-powered) trains ran at 100mph on sections of the line.

By the time the first generation of bullet trains retired in 1999, the line was running at a top speed of 168mph, and the now-electrified East Coast Mainline had bumped up to 125mph.

Thanks to a commitment to continuous improvements, today the Tōkaidō Shinkansen line runs at 177mph. Yet, the East Coast Mainline’s top speed hasn’t increased in the last 48 years. A line whose speed was once competitive has since stagnated.

But the UK certainly beat Japan on one big improvement: smoking was banned on East Coast Mainline trains in 2005, but astonishingly persisted—albeit in designated on-board smoking rooms—until March this year on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen line.