350 mph train, WOW!

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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What can I say but WOW! [:O]

PARIS, France (AP) – France broke the world speed record on rails Tuesday with a souped-up fast train, a feat to showcase the technology it is trying to sell to overseas markets including China.

A high-speed French train named the V-150, equipped with a modified engine and wheels broke the world speed record today by traveling more than 350 miles-per-hour.

The new record is expected to gild France’s image in the expanding market for high-speed technology as countries like China turn to bullet trains.

The black-and-chrome train with three double-decker cars sped along a new line linking Paris to eastern France, starting in the town of Preny. It broke the 1990 rail record, also held by a French train, of 515.3 kph (320.2 mph).

The specially designed train was outfitted to reach up to 540 kph (335.5 mph) – about the speed of a short-distance freight propeller plane.

The TGV, short for “train a grande vitesse,” as France’s bullet trains are called, is made up of three double-decker cars between two engines. It has been equipped with larger wheels than the usual TGV to cover more ground with each rotation and a stronger, 25,000-horsepower engine, said Alain Cuccaroni, in charge of the technical aspects of testing.

Adjustments have also been made to the new track, which opens June 10, notably the banking on turns. Rails were also treated for perfect contact, Cuccaroni said.

The electrical tension in the overhead cable was beefed up, from 25,000 volts to 31,000. Tuesday was the first time that double-decker cars were being used at such a high speed, according to officials of Alstom, which makes TGVs and which crawled back a year ago from the edge of bankruptcy.

The double-decker cars were transformed into a laboratory for the event so that technicians from the state-run rail company SNCF and Alstom can gather data during the run.

While the V-150 smashed the previous

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Top speed achieved was 574.8 kph (356 mph) a slight disappointment as they hoped to bet the Maglev record of 581 kph. Still a very good effort. No Railway has any plans to try and go faster than 330 kph in regular service, the costs start to outweigh the benefits.

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360 mph,zoooom , by the way, did you see the people on the train at speed? seems they hanging on rather than relaxing for a train ride.

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Out of curiosity, what was the hp/ton ratio for the record run?

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Doug Hagestad at the Northwestern University Transportation Center wonders what the FRA track standards would be for that speed.[banghead]

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While I understand that this was a ‘Record Run’, I wonder what the stopping distance would be, if the train went into emergency, if the braking system would be smart enough and sensitive enough to not lock the wheels with an emergency application. I also wonder what the required signal spacing would have to be to entertain anything approaching that speed in a ‘regular’ operating environment.

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Check out the site below, and click on the “Safety” link. They discuss signalling there.

http://www.record2007.com/site/index_en.php

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What shutter speed? What kind of film?

You’d hafta really have a quick finger on the shutter trip… forget using those cheaper cameras with the shutter-delay to eliminate bounce.

This would be like trying to take a photograph of a speeding bullet. Or Superman. [swg]

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For the record run the blocking is absolute, nothing else on the line. In regular service the signal system gives him the maximum allowed line speed for that block or a speed based upon how many blocks ahead of the train are unoccupied. For example the train is in a block and the next 8 blocks are empty and contain no speed restrictions, then he will see a speed limit of 300 (or 320 kph) on the outer part of his speedometer, if only 7 are clear it will indicate 270. Now if the next 8 blocks are clear but there is a train stopped in the 9th block, he will see 320, upon entering the next block it will change to 270 and give an audible warning, and the trains’ control system will give him a few moments to slow the train, if he doesn’t the computer will do it for him, and so on. Block length is 1500 metres, a little less than a mile. Slower trains need fewer blocks, freights with poorer brakes add blocks, to the equivilent speed passenger train. A speed restriction is enforced in the same way. Note in France no freights operate on the high-speed lines, except for maintenance trains, and the special Postal TGVs. The German LZB works similarly and along the Upper Rhine Valley, freights must be equipped with a simpler version of LZB, called ELKE, in order to operate to the Swiss border. TGVs, ICEs, and the other European high-speed trains are equipped with three braking systems, all normal braking is done with the regenerative brakes (like dynamics), they also have multiple disc brakes for lower speeds, and they have Eddy cu

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It should be noted that this train was with a train of the French State railroad, SNCF. In order to do this, some US $ 6.6 billion was spent. Good luck getting the Us or any State to spend that much money on merely a train.

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Steam was capable of over 100 MPH over 100 years ago. In the U. S., passenger trains sharing tracks with freight used to reach such speeds until about 1950. Nowdays, it does not happen outside of the N. E. corridor.

WOW remains Buck Rogers without sufficent desire to divy out the dollars.

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31hp/ton.

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The record is highly impressive, as are the pictures of the train in motion. But it is far from daily operation. Tension in the catenary was raised from 25 to 31 kV (50 Hz AC). Additional trackwork on the rail was done. The record-train got slightly larger wheels, and it had only three (bilevel) passenger-coaches between the two streamlined engines (A-units in first-generation-diesel-terms). Alsthom engineers say, they believe the speed-limit for railroads will be somewhere 600 pkh. The problem is not the rail-wheel-part of the system, but the catenary and the pantograph. This implies of course that diesel- or turbine- (or steam-) powered trains could perhaps run faster, at least in theory.

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Awesome website for the 2007 record. I liked the video too for the V150. 356 mph…That’s insane.

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G’day, Y’all,
The speed record for a 1/8th scale steam locomotive is over 60 mph. So scale that up and some nut was hitting 480+ mph with, probably, 10-inch diameter drive wheels seven and a half inches apart. I would have rather been on the TGV, myself.
My family went to France a couple of weeks ago to visit my daughter studying in Lille. They rode the TGV to Paris but my son didn’t believe me when I told him the TGVs normally hit 150 mph. Then I showed him the schedule which stated that the train went just under 130 miles in 57 minutes. He was really surprised because the train didn’t feel like it was going that fast. But then E.H. Harriman was once surprised that his personal train on the UP was going 65 beause it felt much slower because of system-wide track improvments he had ordered when he felt a return to a bullish economy was just around the corner and wanted to take advantage of it. Where is he when we need him. For that matter, where is Dr. Thomas Durant when we Georgia commuter rail advocates need someone who knows how to get the attention of our legislature which is now in the pockets of the road builders.

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the word WOW is an understatement more like ‘‘unbelivable’’ comes to my mind,how in the world did they do it?i am besides myself when i saw it on the news from my local tv station.think of it if you will like a techneological breakthrough or acivement.just like the airbus super jumbo the a380 with 555 passengers up to 800+ just mind boggeling

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Is there anyone who knows of a website I can go to in order to view the running at 350 mph?

Thanks,

-Jim

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I think this is the bst video I have seen of the run.

MSNBC Video

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The thing is deisel and turbine and of course steam have their own reasons for not being able to run this fast. First deisel cannot produce the horsepower without simply becoming too heavy. The turbo train record is 199mph. At least that is how it stands now. Keep in mind that at one time the current collection at the pentograph was limiting the trains to just about 200mph. There was even a time when it was predicted that trains will never even reach 300mph because the wheels wouldn’t be able to keep the traction. So I find it strange that Altsom should predict a 600km/h limit today.

If they can test run electric passenger trains at 350mph today, then one day they will be able to run regularly schedualed trains at this speed.

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The point in the above post is well-made. Self-contained motive power (diesel, steam, gas-turbine, etc.) has no reserve beyond its rating. Electrics have higher short-term ratings based on what the on-board systems will tolerate and how much electricity can be drawn from the wire by the pantograph. All electrics have a continuous HP rating with which most of us are familiar but also have higher short-term ratings. The horsepower that was used to set the record run was appreciably higher than the continuous ratings of the locomotives involved.