watching the discovery channel seen the fastest trains in the world and guess what the french have it i think they said it went as fast as 320mph how would you like to be on that ride
Last spring I took the family to France and we rode the TGV from Paris to Lyon. It does not go 320mph in normal service, I think closer to 200mph. Anyway, what is most amazing is how smooth and quiet it is. It runs on special seamless track with long superelevated curves. You have an amazing feeling of speed, but you are somewhat isolated from it because it is so smooth and quiet. A fantastic engineering success.
I think it’s around 320 km (kilometers per hour) which would be around 200 mph. Pretty amazing what you can do with trains if you decide to really do it.
I used to drive along the main autoroute in Northern France making the trip from the London to Paris. The high speed road was parrallel the tracks which the cross-channel Eurostar TGV train travelled. I would be driving 150 km/hr (90 MPH) the French would be passing me at what I considered super fast speeds 110 to 120 mph. Then along would come the TGV train and it made us all look like we were standing still. Most quiet and just plain fast.
Bien sur,
Fred
Actually, I believe srud01 is correct. I saw a show on the French bullet train. They have the “capacity” to run at over 300 MPH but they won’t run them at those speeds. It’s similar to driving a car. Some of us might have cars that can top out at 150 MPH but we only drive them at about 50% of that.
Tom
I rode the Eurostar (chunnel) train from London to Brussels around
'96, which is similar to the TGV. Our top speed after leaving the
tunnel reached 300 KPH, or about 186 MPH.
This also was an amazingly quiet and smooth ride.
Hal
The Eurostar is technically a TGV-family train as is the Spanish AVE, the Brit GNER White Rose, the Korean Kr, and (most distantly) the Amtrak Acela.
The French TGV is an amazing piece of technology especially the new third Generations like the Thylas PBKR sets. However, as Top Gear proved last year, one can still travel from the British Midlands to the Cote-d’Azure faster in an Aston Martin at highway speed than one can in an all-rail journey on the fastest trains.
Cheers!
~METRO
Actually a french bullet train carried out the world absolute speed record 15 or so years ago, at 510 km/h, that is roughly 320 mph or 270 kts. But it is important to remember it was a modified sample, with wheelsets of greater diameter than normal, and with 5 cars between engines instead of 10.
Furtermore, it should be interresting to know, with the remaining number of seats in the modified configuration, what the energy consumption was, reported per seat, at the top recorded speed. Still on the right side comarative with air transport? Who knows…
Dominique
The Tgv is rated in the book of world as the fastest train in the world at 320 MPH. It is only run at 180 MPH in normal service. Ask me how I know!
Isn’t it amazing what can be done in countries where the government isn’t married to highways and in bed with the oil industry!
Don’t forget that Japan also has a country-wide high speed network.
Chuck
Yes but they don’t have posse’s of Indians attacking the trains and killing all the passengers.
On the opposite, as the French State Railroad is only interrested with passenger trains and especially bullet trains, french railroad lost the battle of freight. The result beeing only a little 20% of freight beeing carried by rail (vs 40% thirty years ago) and armies of trucks battling the roads…BTW, it may change as the rail transport is beeing deregulated here in Europe, and the old jurassic state owned companies are losing their monopole.
Nevertheless, myself, as passenger trains are boring to my eyes, and as I’m loving heavy freights, I found here a reason to model an american railroad![;)]
Dominique