Chinese High-Speed Train Sets New World Record

shmG writes "A new high-speed train linking Chinese cities Shanghai and Hangzhou has set a fresh world record for train speed at 416.6 kilometers per hour (259 mph) on its trial run on Tuesday. The train is expected to cut the travel time by half, to 40 minutes for covering a distance of 202 kilometers between the two cities at an average speed of 350 kilometers per hour. 'The new record of 416.6 km per hour shows that China has achieved a new milestone in high-speed train technologies,' Zhang Shuguang, deputy chief engineer of the Ministry of Railways, was quoted as saying."

Comments

booyah

[Anonymous Coward]

In your face Japan!

Re:booyah

[Sique]

But the Shinkansen made 443 km/h in diverse tests, still about 25 km/h faster than the chinese train.

Re:booyah

[AC-x]

And the French TGV reached 574.8 km/h in a special test run. However these were specially modified trains, while this Chinese train broke the speed record for an unmodified train

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles#Conventional_wheeled

Wrong!

[SmilingBoy]

The TGV holds the record with 575 km/h! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV_world_speed_record

Re:Wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

China's World records are like the US World Series only in name.

Re:Wrong!

[AJWM]

That TGV record is for a test train on a specially prepared track with customized power feed and tensioning on the catenary. It's not clear from TFA, but I believe the Chinese are claiming the record for a production train on production track (ie equivalent to scheduled runs).

See e.g. this from the Wikipedia TGV article: "A TGV service previously held the record for the fastest scheduled rail journey with a start to stop average speed of 279.4 km/h (173.6 mph),[2][3] which was surpassed by the Chinese CRH service Harmony express on the Wuhan-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway in 2009."

Re:Wrong!

[Malc]

The article's full of errors:

A first-class train ticket to travel between the two cities is estimated to cost more than 100 yuan ($14.90), which is twice the existing fare, Jiefang Daily reported.

I've done this journey a lot of times, the last time being three weeks ago. The current high speed trains (hitting about 170kph) cost Y54 (2nd class) or Y64 (1st class). More than double the price of the existing first class would be in excess of Y130, which is bordering on exageration. The trains are always full, and there are a lot of rich Chinese and Western businessmen on this route, so I doubt they will have trouble filling seats.

Travellers believe that the high-speed train between Shanghai and Hangzhou make take longer than the two-hour drive on road if the train stops at all the nine stations along the route, seven of which are newly built in suburban districts of Shanghai and some cities of Zhejiang.

What bullshit. The current high speed trains stop maybe once or twice between Shanghai and Hangzhou - why would this one stop more than that? It'd blow the average speed, and anyway, there are already slower regional trains. Trying to claim it's a two drive to Hangzhou is again exageration... especially trying to get in to Hangzhou with its absolutely abysmal traffic problems.

I wonder though, what has happened to the maglev link between the two cities that they were building. I saw an elevating track by the highway a few weeks ago which was either the maglev line, or maybe something else.

Re:Wrong!

[shikaisi]

Please remember there are no such things as "1st class" and "2nd class" seats in China. This is a classless society ;-) You can buy "soft seat" or "hard seat" tickets, however.

Re:Wrong!

[Ash Vince]

I guess the obvious solution is to electrify the fences with 20,000 volts.

Actually, the obvious (and cheaper) solution is simply to make sure the front of the train is fairly sturdy and won't get dented by morons walking along the track looking for their Darwin award. You might want to make it easy to clean too :)

Re:I'd be happy if our intercity trains did 300kph

[Dynedain]

Lucky bastard, here in California we get 120km/hr. And anything faster is going to be 9 billion dollars, and over a decade, just to build the first 25 mile stretch along existing right-of-ways.

Re:In the meantime, we in the USA...

[pr100]

So all roads in the US are toll roads? ... or it's OK for the state to cough up for roads, but not for train tracks?

Re:In the meantime, we in the USA...

[icebraining]

The phrase "European/Chinese economic system" makes no sense. European economies are extremely different from the Chinese.

Unlike what some may believe, there aren't only two economic systems, the US Capitalist and the Other. Even if both the European and the Chinese invest more public money in infrastructure than the US (do they?), it doesn't mean they have a similar system.

Re:I'd be happy if our intercity trains did 300kph

[JasterBobaMereel]

In both cases the problem is the track ...

In the UK the track goes around a lot of corners and is far from straight, and to take out the bends would cost huge amounts (especially through towns/cities)

In the US your track is very poor quality (a legacy of the speed it was built and the huge extent of the network) and the cost of upgrading is huge ...

The very fast trains in Japan/France/China all benefit from the local governments simply forcibly buying the land required at cost (or less) and getting on with it ...

Not really

[Viol8]

All tilting does is make it more comfortable for the passengers. It doesnt redice the centripetal forces on the bogies and track which will become severe at very high speed. Also signalling needs to be upgraded for very high speed running to take account of greater stopping distances amongst other things.

Re:Not really

[Timmmm]

No, the net horizontal force on the wheels would be the same. The vertical force should be equalised between them though.

The only way you can decrease the horizontal force is to camber the actual track, which they do.