Photo/Illutration Floodwaters inundate bullet trains of the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line at a rail yard in Nagano at 8:12 a.m. on Oct. 13 after embankments of nearby Chikumagawa river collapsed. (Mari Endo)

East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) plans to scrap eight bullet trains used on the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line that were inundated during Typhoon No. 19, the company’s president, Yuji Fukasawa, said Nov. 6.

The E-7 series trains were among 10 bullet trains, consisting of 120 cars, that were flooded at the JR East Nagano Shinkansen rail yard after the typhoon caused the Chikumagawa river in Nagano city to burst its banks on Oct. 12.

West Japan Railway Co. (JR West), owner of the other two trains, which are W-7 series, decided to scrap them after concluding that they were unusable.

According to the midterm settlement of accounts released by the two companies at the end of October, the scrapping of all 10 trains will result in a loss of about 11.8 billion yen ($108 million), excluding depreciation costs, for JR East, while the loss for JR West will be about 3 billion yen.

JR East plans to manufacture eight replacement bullet trains. The standard production cost is about 300 million yen per train car, meaning that JR East will have to spend 28.8 billion yen for the endeavor.

JR East’s services on the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line have been reduced to 80 percent of regular operations. Fukasawa said full services on the line will return by the end of this fiscal year.