Look at the track layout for the Tohoku Shinkansen [1], you'll see that on most stations, there are either two platform tracks per direction, or one platform tr

Look at the track layout for the Tohoku Shinkansen [1], you'll see that on most stations, there are either two platform tracks per direction, or one platform track and one passing track. In this world, on mainline rail, stations usually have more tracks than the lines they connect to. (Yes this is not uniformly so, but trains don´t have to uniformly stop at all stops, they can skip smaller ones to reduce dwell time pressure) Btw, more station tracks than line tracks can also happen on regional rail, for example check out the downton section of RER C in Paris (the yellow line) [2]. [1] https://www.haisenryakuzu.net/documents/jr/shinkansen/tohoku/?lang=en https://www.haisenryakuzu.net/documents/jr/shinkansen/tohoku... [2] http://cartometro.com/cartes/rer-idf/ http://cartometro.com/cartes/rer-idf/