Aiding and abetting the periodically frantic life in the Gildersleeve home was family cook and housekeeper Birdie Lee Coggins (Lillian Randolph). Although in the first season, under writer Levinson, Birdie was often portrayed as saliently less than bright, she slowly developed as the real brains and caretaker of the household under writers John Whedon, Sam Moore and Andy White. In many of the later episodes Gildersleeve has to acknowledge Birdie’s commonsense approach to some of his predicaments. By the early 1950s, Birdie was heavily depended on by the rest of the family in fulfilling many of the functions of the household matriarch, whether it be giving sound advice to an adolescent Leroy or tending Marjorie’s children.
By the late 1940s, Marjorie slowly matures to a young woman of marrying age. During the 9th season (September 1949-June 1950) Marjorie meets and marries (May 10) Walter “Bronco” Thompson (Richard Crenna), star football player at the local college. The event was popular enough that Look devoted five pages in its May 23, 1950 issue to the wedding. After living in the same household for a few years with their twin babies Ronnie and Linda, the newlyweds move next door to keep the expanding Gildersleeve clan close together.
Leroy, aged 10–11 during most of the 1940s, is the all-American boy who grudgingly practices his piano lessons, gets bad report cards, fights with his friends and cannot remember to not slam the door. Although he is loyal to his Uncle Mort, he is always the first to deflate his ego with a well-placed “Ha!!!” or “What a character!” Beginning in the Spring of 1949, he finds himself in junior high and is at last allowed to grow up, establishing relationships with the girls in the Bullard home across the street. From an awkward adolescent who hangs his head, kicks the ground and giggles whenever Brenda Knickerbocker comes near, he transforms himself overnight (November 28, 1951) into a more mature young man when Babs Winthrop (both girls played by Barbara Whiting) approaches him about studying together. From then on, he branches out with interests in driving, playing the drums and dreaming of a musical career.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gildersleeve
The Shinkansen Bullet Train (speed 320 km/h) 700, N700 and N700A Series
The Shinkansen (新幹線?, new trunk line) is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan operated by four Japan Railways Group companies. Starting with the Tōkaidō Shinkansen (515.4 km) in 1964, the network has expanded to currently consist of 2,387.7 km (1,483.6 mi) of lines with maximum speeds of 240–320 km/h (150–200 mph), 283.5 km (176.2 mi) of Mini-shinkansen lines with a maximum speed of 130 km/h (80 mph), and 10.3 km (6.4 mi) of spur lines with Shinkansen services. The network presently links most major cities on the islands of Honshu and Kyushu, with construction of a link to the northern island of Hokkaido underway.
The maximum operating speed is 320 km/h (200 mph) (on a 387.5 km section of the Tōhoku Shinkansen). Test runs have reached 443 km/h (275 mph) for conventional rail in 1996, and up to a world record 581 km/h (361 mph) for maglev trains in 2003.
Shinkansen literally means new trunk line, referring to the high-speed rail line network. The name Superexpress (超特急 chō-tokkyū, initially used for Hikari trains, was retired in 1972 but is still used in English-language announcements and signage.
The Tōkaidō Shinkansen is the world’s busiest high-speed rail line. Carrying 151 million passengers per year (March 2008), it has transported more passengers (over 5 billion, entire network over 10 billion) than any other high-speed line in the world. Between Tokyo and Osaka, the two largest metropolises in Japan, up to thirteen trains per hour with sixteen cars each (1,323-seat capacity) run in each direction with a minimum headway of three minutes between trains. Though largely a long-distance transport system, the Shinkansen also serves commuters who travel to work in metropolitan areas from outlying cities. Japan’s Shinkansen network had the highest annual passenger ridership (a maximum of 353 million in 2007) of any high-speed rail network until 2011, when China’s high-speed rail network surpassed it at 370 million passengers annually.
Information sources: Wikipedia