French Train Breaks Speed Record

Josh Fink writes "A French train on the TGV line has broken the wheeled train speed record - again. At a speed of 350 miles per hour, they came close to breaking the all time record of 361 miles per hour, held by a Japanese maglev train. It was last broken back in 1990. From the article: '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.'"

Comments

For those of us that aren't metrically challenged

[lagfest]

that's 574.8 km/h

Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it

[zippthorne]

The east coast of the US does qualify. And we already have a high-speed train.

Unfortunately, there are several factors that keep it from being a useful project. The first of which is that a round trip from Boston to New York costs the same as a flight from boston to NY. With almost as much hassle, and bit more time on in transit, it just doesn't make sense for passengers.

The second is that it's not high speed. The train is nice. The ride is smooth. It can travel up to 165 mph, but averages less than 70 due to sharing a less than ideal track with conventional trains.

I don't know what the problem is. The technology exists, the market is there, but there just doesn't seem to be the will to do anything other than half-assed measures. I suspect it's because AMTRAK, the organization which runs the trains in the NE corridor, has found a revenue source that doesn't actually depend on ridership.

Totally Offtopic

[Logic and Reason]

The plural of the English word "metropolis" is, indeed, "metropolises." If you want to be pretentious, the Latin plural is "metropoles," and the ancient Greek plural is "metropoleis." "Metropoli" is only used by idiots who don't know Latin but like to pretend they do, and "metropolii" is right out.

Re:What you don't see

[QuantumRiff]

The Trains that amtrak runs from LA to seattle average out to 30MPH. They stop at every stinking town of 500 along the tracks, and have to pull over to let any cargo train go by, since amtrak doesn't own the tracks, the cargo companies do. I would love a Train that could hit 100+MPH, and stay that fast. I hate the restrictions and burdens of flying, and gas prices are a pain in the ass.

Lot of energy to generate that lift.

[Kadin2048]

Erm, I think you're neglecting to consider a few factors in your unsupported hunchery.

Consider the forces at work. A train has to keep itself in motion, which requires pushing air out of the way. It also has some rolling resistance.

The airplane, on the other hand, also has to keep itself in forward motion, but there's also a lot of energy being spent keeping that fucker up in the air. The shape of a plane's wings generate lift, but they do so at the cost of creating drag. Lots of drag, compared to a train. There's just no possible way that the plane is ever going to be as efficient, because not only are you moving it horizontally across the earth, you're also putting it (and holding it) some 30,000 feet off the ground. That's much more energy-intensive than overcoming the rolling resistance of a few wheels and bearings, particularly when the wheels are running on steel rail and you can optimize the hell out of the rest of the system. (As a civilization, we're pretty good at making things rotate with minimal resistance. Ironically, it's jet aircraft that have really brought the engineering of high-speed turbobearings to near-perfection.)

It would be pretty easy to run the numbers if you wanted to: just look at the fuel consumption in gallons per hour for a modern locomotive and a jet aircraft, multiply by the energy density of the fuel (aviation kerosene and diesel), and divide by the number of passengers in each. With trains that aren't in fixed trainsets, it would get a little difficult to figure out how many "passengers" to include, but you could get some ballpark numbers.

Anyway, other people have already run the numbers. Here's a comparison done by Eurostar comparing London to Paris by plane and train, in terms of CO2 emissions:
link. "The research shows that each passenger on a return flight between London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle generates 122 kilograms of CO2, compared with just 11 kilograms for a traveller on a London-Paris return journey by train."

Now, that's CO2 emissions, not energy consumption (although the two are basically directly proportional when you're getting your power via the combustion of petroleum products), and it's probably made somewhat artificially low because the French generate a lot of electricity from fission, which is CO2-neutral, but that's not enough to explain a tenfold decrease.

Physics just isn't on the side of the airplane in terms of energy efficiency. Anything that stays on the ground is going to have a huge advantage.

Re:What you don't see

[file-exists-p]

More practical than a plane, and more comfortable than a bus

Trains such as the French TGV, the Swiss ICN, or (even better) the Japanese Shinkansen, are far (FAR) more comfortable than a plane (I am talking economy class here).

Re:What you don't see

[AwaxSlashdot]

"probably fewer have been killed" : 0 death in 25 years because of accidents. And yes, once a TGV derailed at almost 200mph : just minor injuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV#Safety

AWx