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.'"

And yet

[Colin Smith]

Even in France, 9 in 10 passenger miles are not by rail.

 

For those of us that aren't metrically challenged

[lagfest]

that's 574.8 km/h

AmTrak

[Usquebaugh]

I keep thinking that Amtrak could do a 150mph goods service. Link 10 cities or so in each state to each other by rail corridors e.g. San Diego, L.A., San Francisco, Sacramento, Bakersfield. Transport containerized goods only. Drive down costs through streamlining the process.

Throw out everything that is not needed to move the containers, computerize everything e.g. no driver. Automatic marshaling yards. etc. etc. Could we get a 40ton container coast to coast for less than $100 in less than 24hrs?

But I guess we'll have to let China do that as we have to much political inertia to try something that radical.

Re:Magnets versus Wheels

[will66]

The Shinkansen in Japan use lots of small motors distributed among the cars. This gives them excellent acceleration (important when stations are close together), but results in higher maintenance costs. Another problem is that it requires high voltage electricity (25KV) at every car; the Shinkansen solved this by putting a pantograph ( the spring-loaded contact bar that touches the overhead wire ) on every two cars -- and this increased the wear rates on the wire. French engineers considered these extra costs when the developed the TGV. Most subways use motors per car as well, but wear is less of an issue when contacting a third rail, and the 600volts used is much easier to handle.

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.

Re:25000 hp sustained is a lot

[Daytura]

25,000 hp sustained is a ton! I wonder how they keep it from melting.

8 engines per locomotive. 2 locomotives were used for the record-breaking train. An individual engine only needs to put out ~1500hp. Still a heap of power, but not enough to grenade the trans, and there's a big crankshaft in there [trainweb.org]. Also, they only turn at 4000 rpms, instead of the 10k+ rpms you'd get in a typical top-fueler.

However, this train probably doesn't do a 1/4 mile in 4.4 seconds.

Indeed - not from a standing start. That's 3.3Gs, and the customers might spill their wine. When it gets up to speed it covers a mile in about 10 seconds.

Re:What you don't see

[aurelien]

WTF ? Insightful ??

The reality is that the french state budget dispatch for transport is something like 80 % road, 12 % rail.

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.

Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it

[genii]

ehum...
just a short note. check your map. i live in china for the time being. area? should be about the same as the US. cities far apart from each other? Duh, yeah. Train travel used widely? YAP. a LOT. on the ABSOLUTELY NOT densely populated countryside to the west as well as the HIGHLY densely populated coast in the east (14-30 million people / city).
I an a foreigner here, and even for biz trips we use the train sometimes. we have German high speed trains (ICE licence) and the maglev in shanghai (neat... fast, quiet, less expensive than a cabride. and a cab costs nothing here). it IS less hassle then flying. i am in sales and i travel a LOT here.

nothing new said here, just dont assume that because of US's huge and not so densely populated area train travel would work. it does.

Re:USA Trains: Sad State of Affairs

[SuperBanana]

They cannot get it together to create a train infrastructure that works efficiently and affordably. Most of them barely go faster than 55 MILES per hour.

Bullshit. The Metroliner from Boston to DC (all the way down to VA) and back runs at 120MPH where possible (only 30MPH short of the Acela.) The Acela only runs at top speed for a stretch or two from Boston to Providence and Providence to CT, I think. That and the reduced number of stops reduce travel time from Boston to DC by an hour.

It is the parts where they have to slow down to a huge degree that kill the average speed; my GPS unit calculated an average of about 90MPH. When we approached New Rochelle in NY, we spent a good 10-15 minutes doing only about 20MPH. Sad.

I'm convinced the problem is not a matter of money (they could make more money by running more trains- every time I've been on the train, it's been PACKED- one time, they had people sitting on their luggage in the aisles), but dated thinking with regards to how trains are dispatched/controlled/routed.

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 [eurostar.com]. "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.

B.S. U.S. could have HST now for 1/10th war cost

[mrraven]

Bullshit. There could be this exact sort of high speed rail between Boston and New York, Chicago and Detroit, and L.A. to Seattle with say 120 MPH connector trains in the flatlands for literally 1/10th the cost of Bush disastrous pointless war in Iraq. Follow the Benjamins it's all about the O I L companies in the U.S:

See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_high-speed _rail [wikipedia.org]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/High -Speed_Rail_Corridor_Designations_53kb.png [wikimedia.org]

Upgrading U.S. train track is 8 times cheaper than building new freeways:
http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/201 [dot.gov]

Get some fact before just regurgitating what you hear on Rush (brought to you by the Hummer H5 now including it's own entrance ladder).

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:Physics is a bitch isn't it

[demonbug]

It would make perfect economic sense in those areas.

The real stumbling blocks include the lobbying power of the motor industry, and the fragmented local government structure on places like California where it would take a miracle to get a straight railway line through the backyards of all the NIMBY merchants.

There is a plan in place, at least for California, to build a high-speed rail system [ca.gov]. While getting rights of way can be a bit of an issue, the main factor is cost. It would cost something like $33 billion to build the system (to connect LA, San Diego, Sacramento, and the bay Area it would require a system built from scratch that is approximately the size of the entire French high-speed system (~750 miles according to wikipedia), which has been built in stages over the last 30 years), and it is very unlikely that it would ever be completely self-supporting. Even for conventional rail, which is somewhat cheaper to operate (theoretically), most of the busiest passenger rail lines in California aren't even self sufficient. I think the Capitol Corridor, one of the "models" of commuter train efficiency in California, only covers something like 50% of its operating costs. When you try and sell such a huge bond measure to build such a system, and it is doubtful it will ever be self-supporting, it seems to scare people away (never mind that California voters just voted themselves something like $200 billion in new bonds for infrastructure construction - lots of it for highways that essentially pay for 0% of their operating costs, never mind their construction cost).
That said, there is supposed to be a $10 billion bond measure on the ballot next year for the initial stages of construction.

Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it

[gad_zuki!]

>While vacationing in Italy, I found rail travel to be fantastic. It was so simple just to go from city to city to see the sights by rail -- a couple hours from Florence, and you're in Rome. Nice.

Italy: 116,000 square miles

USA: 3,537,441 square miles

Re:What you don't see

[StikyPad]

Japan solved that by having multiple tiers of trains. I'm not sure what the exact terms are, but there are express trains that stop only at the point of origin and the destination, then there are semi-express trains that only stop at major interchanges, then there are standard trains which make every stop.

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 [wikipedia.org]

AWx