NAGOYA, Japan — On a desolate stretch of track just before midnight, when all passenger lines have been put to bed, a juiced-up Japanese bullet train goes online and accelerates to more than 200 mph. The 700-ton train, about a quarter of a mile long, whooshes by rice paddies in under five seconds. There are no locals around to witness the train glide to a stop at a deserted Kyoto Station, but that’s not the point. This is an accelerated sales pitch aimed squarely at the U.S., where Japan is competing with European train makers for a new high-speed train network that could deliver contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Diplomats, business leaders and journalists were crammed in to watch special speedometers record the feat recently, the first time operator Japan Central Railway Co. has allowed outsiders to join a test run. Rivals abroad said Japanese trains weren’t up to spec, and JR Central wanted to set the record straight. ‘In France and Germany, they have been saying we can only do 280 kilometers (170 miles) per hour, so we had to demonstrate, said Yoshiyuki Kasai, company chairman. That Japan’s bottle-nosed bullet trains – known […]