About 30 people made three round trips on a 300-meter track by the train that ran at a speed of 50 kilometers per hour.

The train is powered by a storage battery located on the roof and a fuel battery placed on the bottom, and it can run at a maximum speed of 100 kph, according to the train operator known as JR East.

The only material the train discharges is water, and it can run for 50 to 100 km without refueling hydrogen. It also requires no constant supply of electricity from overhead wires like conventional trains as it can store energy that is produced when it makes a stop, it said.

The train will begin test runs on actual train tracks from next April, according to JR East.

The Railway Technical Research Institute, a Tokyo-based research body of the JR group, has been developing a fuel battery train, but no trains other than the latest JR development have both the fuel and storage batteries.

Minoru Ogasawara, head of JR East's center for developing cutting-edge railway systems, said, "There still are many issues to overcome, such as the cost and the distance it can travel, but it will improve the (city) view as it requires no overhead wires." "We hope to make it a commuting train 10 or 20 years from now," he said.