Taiwan's high-speed railway system linking Taipei and the southern city of Kaohsiung will probably not start on schedule next October due to delays in adjusting the Japanese bullet train system to European specifications.

Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp., operator of the system, decided in 1997 to adopt a European system combining German locomotives and French double-decker passenger cars.

But in late 1999, THSRC changed tack and instead awarded a group of Japanese companies the priority rights to negotiate the contract.

The consortium of seven Japanese companies, including Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. and Mitsui & Co., then won a contract to operate the railway's core system, including rolling stock, electrification and signaling systems.

As a result, the high-speed rail system is mainly based on the Tokaido Shinkansen Line.

But the specifications based on European standards remain unrevised, causing test runs originally scheduled for October to be postponed.

"The fact that a European signaling system was adopted for the Taiwan shinkansen is another cause for the delay," said Zheng Mingzhang, director at the Railway Culture Society in Taipei.

The Japanese group is now rushing to develop an automatic train control system for "bidirectional operations" of trains on a single track -- a system that would never be adopted in Japan.

Japan's rapid-transit railways are operated on a double track system for separate directions.

Since the system's infrastructure is also based on European specifications, the viaducts are stronger and the tunnels are wider than those of the shinkansen system.

All these resulted in "extra time and money," a Taiwanese government official said.

Switch points and tracks in station yards are German-made. Part of the civil engineering work is also being undertaken by non-Japanese firms.

"Without test runs, we cannot ascertain the safety of the route connected with Japanese and German tracks of different specifications," said Takashi Shima, a former Japanese National Railways engineer and an adviser to THSRC.

Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) and West Japan Railway Co. are supposed to dispatch motormen and mechanics to Taiwan to train their counterparts. The two railways are not members of the consortium.

"Since the safety and durability of the system are not ensured, we should not be held responsible for any accident or slump in business after the operation gets under way," a JR executive said.

Veteran JR motormen supposed to test the Taiwan shinkansen are training to get accustomed to motorman's platforms that are of different specifications.

At the Yenchao main workshop in southern Taiwan, dusty 700T trains based on Series 700 Tokaido Shinkansen Line trains sit idle. They cannot make a trial run due to the short supply of electricity.

An official of the Interchange Association, which functions as Japan's embassy in Taiwan, is apprehensive about the situation.

"Since Taiwanese people are convinced that the Japanese shinkansen technologies are introduced 100 percent into Taiwan, if the opening for passenger services is delayed and an accident occurs, it would spark widespread mistrust of Japan throughout Taiwan," he said.