186 MPH, about the cruising speed of a Douglas DC-3, or the 1:1 scale equivalent speed of an Athearn Hustler.
Andre
Match and raise 20KPH.
Tohoku Shinkansen has one stretch scheduled at 320kph.
On the original Tokyo-Osaka route 16 car trains operate on peak time headway of 3 minutes - comparable to subway rush hour, but with twice the passenger capacity.
By comparison, US ‘high speed rail’ is an ox cart in a chariot race.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - without Shinkansen)
Going one better than that, the Shanghai Maglev train does a max speed of about 431kph (268 mph) and an average speed of about 250 kph over its 30 km (18.6 mile) run. I wonder how fast it would go if it got away from the city for a long run through the countryside???
I dunno, I see an American flag in that image. I guess even going 300km/h doesn’t deliver freedom and bald eagles like an All-American Amtrak train can 
Try to top that:
574.8 kph equal 357.2 mph!
And it´s a real train!
574.8 kph!
Scary.
Dave
Post edited April 23. Got a little outside the rules.
I guess the amount of money necessary to establish a highspeed line capable of 500 + kph wiil never prove to be economically viable - not in Europe at least. Maybe in China or the US, where distances are much greater.
I originally had a different reply to your social/political comment, but decided instead to delete as to not further derail the OP’s subject.
Engineering like that is nothing short of remarkable. To get these kind of speeds they have to have some really high voltages. And with the currents required, when there’s even the smallest of breaks from the pantograph wire, it results in some very very hot arcs which damage components quickly.
But despite all this, I wonder what will happen if it hits a dear. Here in the states, train lines will often stop and inspect the train and have to remove any dead carcus which might be still on the track for fear of damaging components. Yes that seems silly, but a carcus could comprimise a hose or cable.
Don,
they did a number of modifications to existing stock, catenary, track voltage and track to be able to go that fast.
Here is a link explaing a little more : Project V 150
But over those distances, an airliner still wins. Especially if the advances in low boom supersonics bear appliable fruit.
New York to Chicago takes about 1 hour 55 minutes flying time. Even a hypothetical air-line railroad from New York to Chicago would take you two and a half hours at 500 kph. Is that worth the trillions you’d need to build that monster?
You may be comparing apples with pears. If you add the time for driving to the airport, parking your car, checking in, security check and getting from the airport to downtown at your destination, the time actually required may be well over those 2 1/2 hrs.
The ultimate would be an evacuated tube shaped to allow twice orbital velocity at its (probably subterranean) altitude. Passengers would feel one G, but would be inverted relative to Earth surface. The start and end convolutes would be an interesting design challenge - and an even more interesting construction challenge. Not worth trying to model - you can’t see the tube capsule.
With that, New York - Chicago start to stop would probably take about as long as the walk from parking to the ticket counter at O’Hare…
Chuck (Occasional SF author)
Ditto, I too was temped to comment on the off topic political comments…
As to the topic - so what? I’m only interested in my real world portal to portal travel times, from my door to my final destination.
I live 30 minutes from the nearest AMTRAK station, and it goes nowhere I need or want to go…but even if it did, the 88 MPH speed limit of the Northeast Corridor seems fast enough to me. They have a tough enough time keeping the people and cars off the tracks and the trains on the tracks as it is now.
Sheldon
In the US, there’s not really any difference between the two. For instance, Amtrak requires checked baggage to arrive 45 minutes before departure. But you have to have your ticket before you can check the bag. On a busy day, where you know there will be a line at the ticket kiosks, padding the schedule a bit so you’re not dropping the bag with seconds to spare or if you need to deal with an error at the kiosk, you’re arriving at the station just as far ahead of schedule as if you were flying. While those are procedural issues, so are the airline’s time delays.
We just spent $6 billion (assuming it even comes in at that price in the end) to build 19km of elevated subway line here in DC. Only a few kilometers are underground and most of it is in freeway medians. It required no major earth moving, unlike burrowing and bridging through the Poconos, Appalachians, and Alleghenies would take to get from New York to Chicago. Using that example of cost per kilometer, it would cost $382 trillion to build. The entire US only has an asset value of around $190 trillion in the first place. Not sure that’s worth it, even in a hypothetical level, to save even two hour’s travel time.
[quote user=“NittanyLion”]
Sir Madog
NittanyLion
New York to Chicago takes about 1 hour 55 minutes flying time. Even a hypothetical air-line railroad from New York to Chicago would take you two and a half hours at 500 kph.You may be comparing apples with pears. If you add the time for driving to the airport, parking your car, checking in, security check and getting from the airport to downtown at your destination, the time actually required may be well over those 2 1/2 hrs.
In the US, there’s not really any difference between the two. For instance, Amtrak requires checked baggage to arrive 45 minutes before departure. But you have to have your ticket before you can check the bag. On a busy day, where you know there will be a line at the ticket kiosks, padding the schedule a bit so you’re not dropping the bag with seconds to spare or if you need to deal with an error at the kiosk, you’re arriving at the station just as far ahead of schedule as if you were flying. While those are procedural issues, so are the airline’s time delays.
We just spent $6 billion (assuming it even comes in at that price in the end) to build 19km of elevated subway line here in DC. Only a few kilometers are underground and most of it is in freeway medians. It required no major earth moving, unlike burrowing and bridging through the Poconos, Appalachians, and Alleghenies would take to get from New York to Chicago. Using that example of cost per kilometer, it woul
Geared Steam and Sheldon:
You guys were right. I went a little overboard. I deleated the bulk of the post.
Dave
And your point? The equipment for this particular train has been tested at over 400 KPH, and is certified for 350 KPH. Spain is about 1/3 bigger than Japan in land area and has less than half the population. Japan is a long, narrow country, where Spain is not (obviating the need for headways approximating a subway). While the Japanese led the way with high speed rail with the original Shinkansen, they’re no longer the only game in town.
Top speed is not the gating factor in point to point transportation, it’s average speed. Our trip from Madrid to Barcelona (roughly 390) miles took 3 hours flat from start to stop. We had 2 intermediate stops, Zaragoza and Lleida. There are trains that make 3 stops for the same distance, and they use up an additional 10 minutes. The trains that run non-stop between Madrid and Barcelona take 2.5 hours. This increases the average speed to 252 KPH from the 210 we experienced.
I understand your loyalty to the railways of Japan. They were the first and they have a lot of which to be proud.
Andre
In the US, there’s not really any difference between the two. For instance, Amtrak requires checked baggage to arrive 45 minutes before departure. But you have to have your ticket before you can check the bag. But you have to have your ticket before you can check the bag.
Who checks baggage for a train trip? In 2006, I took AMTRAK from the Tasman St. station (more like an open platform) in Santa Clara, CA to Boston, South Station. The only time baggage was “checked” was when my bag was loaded into the under storage of a Concord Coach Lines bus from South Station to the Portland, ME transportation center.
Come to think of it, I’ve never checked baggage for any train trip I’ve ever taken and that encompasses 10 countries over a span of 30+ years on trains ranging from commuter locals to high speed trains (where, incidentally, there IS NO CHECKED LUGGAGE due to really short station stops).
As for having to have a ticket, I can’t remember the last time I (or we) used anything other than an electronic ticket. So, to add another question, who buys tickets at the station (or the airport or the bus station)?
Andre
So if you are going somewhere for an extended trip you schlep big bags onto the train with you and take them to your seat?
That’s why I own a station wagon…
Sheldon