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

Physics is a bitch isn't it

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

a stronger, 25,000-horsepower engine

25000hp and most of it is used to push air in front of, and around the train. I wonder how much it would cost to build a vaccuum tunnel to run very high speed train in at a fraction of the power required by the TGV...

Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it

[Kranfer]

I saw something on ITunes... Maybe Extreme Engineering or Modern Marvels or something along those lines having to do with that for a tunnel going between NYC and London... Vacuum sealed and mag lev. They said the train could travel at close to 5000 mph IIRC... Its a very interesting idea. The episode is worth purchasing on ITunes.

Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it

[Rei]

I'd sure want to ride it. Having traveled around Japan by train for three weeks, I've grown quite fond of rail travel. It's a nice way to get around. Especially those Shinkansen. Picture your typical airplane trip: you drive a good distance to the airport, drive around in it for a bit, get to some overpriced pay parking, check your baggage, go through security, wait (and hope you didn't miss your flight, because you'd have to reschedule because they're so infrequent), board, wait, taxi, wait, takeoff... now you can finally relax and use electronics in your cramped seat with the loud engines roaring. You land, wait, taxi, wait.. and if you have to change planes, repeat. And so on.

Here's how a shinkansen ride with a rail pass goes in Japan. You take a subway straight to the train station. You walk a very short distance. The trains arrive every few minutes. No security checkpoints -- you just wave your pass as you walk past the counter. You take any seat; they're all the equivalent of an airplane's business-class, or better. Use your electronics right away if you want. It pulls out of the station and accelerates quickly, quitely. You even get the pretty countryside scrolling right past you as you go. What's not to like?

Oh, and to the people (further down) who suggested that the trains would cause "smoke" -- at least in Japan, the bullet trains (and almost all trains, except those in very remote places) are electric -- "densha" (electric-car). Electric trains are so prevalent that even the few non-electric trains are still called densha.

Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it

[Coryoth]

Yeah, if all out population in the US was situated with very high density in an almost straight line, rail would be an option.
Sadly, the American Dream includes owning a Home, with a yard and all that fun stuff. This means that we don't have the population densities outside of a few major metropolitan areas to support rail travel. While it is true that overall the US population is spread over a very large area, there are certainly regions of the US that are sufficiently densely populated that a rail system would be reasonable. In particular there is the east coast, particularly the Boston/New York/Philadelphia/Baltimore corridor. It is sufficiently dense that they already technically have a "high speed train" there -- its just that they never upgraded the tracks for it, so the train doesn't actually go very fast, and the service is poor and always late. If The US and Canada could cooperate there's also a good potential corridor along Chicago/Detroit/Toronto/Montreal/Quebec.

Not for commuting.

[Kadin2048]

The TGV isn't a commuter train. It's point-to-point transportation. We don't really have anything that's quite its equivalent here in the U.S. (anymore -- we did, once, back in the days of effective passenger rail and high-speed inter-urbans) because Amtrak is so fucked up. But you wouldn't be using this to get in and out of the city center to the 'burbs every day; you'd go into the city to get on one, to go to another city.

The infrastructure you'd need around a major intercity train station in the U.S. would be basically the same stuff you need around an airport; lots and lots of parking for people to leave their cars, access to local transportation, etc. The advantage of trains over planes, however, is that you can put the stations right downtown, hopefully maximizing the number of people who can get there without driving, by using existing public transportation, and also minimizing travel time for people who want to get to the city center as a destination.

About the only place in the U.S. where you can approximate this right now, is in the Northeast Corridor, going from say Washington, DC to New York. If you want to fly, you have to get from downtown DC out to one of the airports: if you're lucky, Reagan (practically downtown), if you're unlucky or flying on a discount airline, Dulles or BWI. Then you have to go through the usual security checkpoint rectal-probery, find the gate, board the plane, fly, get off the plane, find your luggage, and get to downtown NYC from JFK or LaGuardia. Total PITA. Amtrak, when it's not running late (granted, almost never), lets you walk into Union Station in downtown DC, walk onto the train, sit down for a few hours, and walk off at Penn Station. Platform to platform, the Acela is about three hours, and it's slower than molasses compared to the European trains.

Now, really the only reason that the Acela is borderline competitive, is because the airlines and the FAA seem to be trying as hard as possible to make the flying experience like getting in a boxcar bound for Auschwicz (but without the efficiency, and probably more lost luggage). If you got rid of all the security checkpoints and just compare travel time, the Acela barely scrapes 100MPH on most days (which is actually slower than the big 8'-driver steam passenger locomotives of a generation ago were capable of), so a jet going 400-500 MPH is obviously going to be faster. But if you can push the train up to 300+MPH, and realize that the airplane is always going to have more "overhead time" because of the distance you have to put airports from cities (to keep them from running into the buildings, noise, etc.), they become a lot more competitive.

Commuter trains are always going to be hobbled by low population density. However, high-speed inter-urban trains operate according to much the same business principles that airlines do. They just need to be much more careful in laying out their routes, because unlike airlines, it's tougher for them to just re-jigger flights when they're not making money. However, there are a number of routes that are probably almost guaranteed to be profitable in the U.S. if you can get the times down to within 100-150% of a plane flight: LA to San Francisco (and then SF to Seattle) is probably a good one on the West Coast, and maybe even LA to Las Vegas. The Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-DC corridor is already profitable with current technology, and would only get better. Extending it down to Atlanta would complete the "BAMA" corridor, and you could hit the high-tech areas in NC along the way, probably.