French Train Breaks Speed Record 612
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.'"
Got Nothing on Blaine... (Score:5, Funny)
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Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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At least someone's working on a project that's beneficial to growing metropolises (metropolii?)
France makes a train going 350mph. What does the US make as it's engineering masterpiece? The H3...
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:4, Funny)
Totally Offtopic (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, this is not beneficial in that way. (Score:4, Insightful)
At least someone's working on a project that's beneficial to growing metropolises (metropolii?)
France makes a train going 350mph. What does the US make as it's engineering masterpiece? The H3...
That is actually a major problem across western Europe right now. Train companies are slowly abandoning medium and short range stretches in favor of the more lucrative business traveler market, and investment in the medium and short range track and trains is languishing, resulting in deteriorating quality and frequency of service. As such, people are forced from the trains to private cars, which bring all the problems of pollution and urban sprawl that we Americans know so well. Furthermore, at these speeds trains do not run much more energy efficiently than planes either.
That is what happens when you privatize things that should be public services.
Re:What you don't see (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What you don't see (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:What you don't see (Score:5, Insightful)
However, a good high speed train would be great down here. LA to bay area...to Vegas... Holy crap, LA - Vegas train like that? Would pay for itself in probably 2 years. More practical than a plane, and more comfortable than a bus, and hella safer than dealing with the nutters on I-15.
Much more useful to have something like that in the US than another Hummer model, at the very least.
And I don't think the financial situation in the US as a nation is on solid enough ground that you can infer to it as better, even to France, but that's just an opinion.
Our rail system is a joke. Worse than a joke. It's not notable enough to use as a punchline.
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You sit in a little metal pod in your house, and are accelerated into the main "backbone". Bluetooth/RFID/something that broadcasts your final destination enables the "routers" to switch your travel onto the routes that get you to where you're going.
Re:What you don't see (Score:4, Funny)
Oh wait...
Re:What you don't see (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What you don't see (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with passenger rail transport is it's very difficult to run it at a profit - especially if the infrastructure isn't there to begin with. Getting people out of cars and onto trains is much harder than the other way around. So it's not particularly attractive to private companies.
This is a problem in any country which has historically shied away from having the government run services.
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Also, are airlines really running a profit right now? Maybe Southwest, but oy...I just don't like them...
Plus I think if it was marketed properly, to the jetsetters in a local region, it could really pay off.
Who wants to spend 5 hours driving or waiting in an airport through delays and the security? Take the train. Gets you there just as fast and you won't lose your luggage, be hassled by an apathetic T
Not a level playing field. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the other issue is that competing modes of transportation get a lot of their infrastructure handed to them, basically for free or with big subsidies, by the Federal government.
If you're a bus company, you don't have to pay to use the roads, the government has already done all the hard work for you. You just drive on them. Same with over-the-road cargo trucking. This is a huge problem for freight railroads, who would otherwise beat the tar out of road trucking: except for UPS and other time-sensitive parcel-deliveries, there's really no reason to haul bulk goods by truck, when you can take the same containers even, and put them on a train and drag them around for a fraction of the fuel cost. But the freight railroads also have to pay, not only for their locomotives and rolling stock, but also for the right-of-ways, maintenance on the track, keeping them clear during the winter, etc. All the trucking industry pays for is whatever the government adds on as a tax to diesel fuel, plus their direct taxes. (And the fuel taxes don't even start to cover the budget for the Interstate system, which is hugely damaged each year by high-axle-weight vehicles like trucks.)
With aircraft, although they admittedly don't require a huge amount of infrastructure when they're in the air (and good thing, too), things like the navigational beacon systems that IFR relies on, plus the Air Traffic Control system/network, are government-run. Sure, some of it's funded with taxes, but I'll bet you it's not 100% self-funding.
I think we can go either way -- either have the government pick up the tab for maintaining the nation's rail network, and make it available to anyone who wants to use it, in the same way that the Interstate highway system and the Air Traffic Control network is, or make users of the ATC network and the Interstate highways pay for their entire budgets so that they're self-funding without any support (and have them pay back over time the cost already contributed) -- but we're only hurting ourselves with the current arrangement. Anything that encourages an inefficiency to continue is inherently bad, and we suffer as a result of it due to higher gas prices, and geopolitical conflicts that arise due to petroleum supplies.
Re:Not a level playing field. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we should get off our asses as a country and reengineer the IDEA of rail transport. First of all, it has a lot of tradeoffs that make it suck, such as having to stop at "stations" rather than going straight there. It's a group transport, so this makes sense. But what if each "car" had an engine in it, but it gets turned off when it's connected in a "train". Then, the whole sucker could break off from the train after a cross country high speed run and run it's small cargo to a smaller local station. More light rails, with an efficient switching system. Multiple sizes of standard containers so a large single car could offload at the local station to a light rail or truck easily (and automatically).
Use *gasp* computers to model the entire land area and figure out the best places to really put tracks; not the easiest, such as when it was done in the 1800's.
With about a trillion bucks and a few decades, we could have the best system around, perfectly matched automobile and rail standards, easily transfer between the two. Granted, we'd have to stop spending 2 trillion a year on some stupid war (which is really just paying a shitload of cash to contractors and oil companies, duh), but why would we want to do that. Why would we want to build anything SUSTAINABLE and good for our economic future when our PRESIDENT actually REALLY thinks that Jesus Christ is going to "come again" (whatever that means) and him and his fellow followers are going to magically disappear of the earth and into heaven. There's no need for planning, America, Jesus will save us.
Sorry, maybe next time.
Re:What you don't see (Score:4, Insightful)
It can be done, but clearly it won't work if it's not done right.
Think about it, a train from LA to San Diego / North California, no need to stay in traffic for hours, save on gas, save on car maintenance, save on traffic accidents, save on nerves getting stretched while waiting in traffic,
It makes so much sense, what doesn't make sense is the american people's love for traffic.
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Re:What you don't see (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes the French have fast trains. They run almost everywhere. Not only are they fast, they are clean, quiet, comfortable, reasonably priced, on time, and have excellent beverage service. This includes all of the SNCF, not just the TGV. An added benefit is that the French are extremely polite about cell phone usage on the trains.
I am certain far more Americans have ridden on French trains than have ever ridden on Apollo or the Shuttle, and probably fewer have been killed.
Re:What you don't see (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV#Safety [wikipedia.org]
AWx
B.S. U.S. could have HST now for 1/10th war cost (Score:3, Informative)
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 tra
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Funny)
What is this tendency that I have observed over the last few years whereby people start to think that the plural of any "difficult" word must end in "-ii"?
I, too, am tired of constantly seeing these mistakii.
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Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:4, Interesting)
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> NWA told me I *HAD* to check my laptop bag...
This might have something to do with your choice of airline. I have flown with a number of airlines, and most of them are friendly, reliable and on time. Not NWA, though.
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Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Insightful)
Not for commuting. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
And far less polluting (Score:4, Insightful)
High speed trains are definitely a better way to go on that score.
Lot of energy to generate that lift. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The other downside is that our population centers are _far_ away from each other. People from Asian or European countries just don't understand how much space lies between American cities.
The United States today does not have the economics going for rail transport that some other countries have. That is why we don't have the rail transport systems that other countries have. It doesn't make economical sense.
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
While there, I got into a conversation with a couple from Crete who were planning to visit the US the following year. They asked if they could drive from New York to Chicago, to New Orleans. They were thinking they could do it in maybe a day! They had no idea just how much time it would take to do that.
Rail is best used for short passenger trips (ex. suburb to city daily commutes) and long haul, large capacity cargo trips in this country. Unless you're traveling in the northeast, forget rail for anything else. It's just not practical.
Informative? (Score:4, Insightful)
Florence, Italy -> Rome, Italy: 275km
Houston, TX, USA -> Austin, TX, USA: 162miles (260km)
Everybody who keeps comparing the EU to the USA and saying how cities in Europe are so much closer are only thinking about things like LA to SF, or even from either of those to New York. Nobody in Europe is going to take a train to get from Oslo to Lisboa either (well, some people do - just as some in the U.S. take roadtrips from coast to coast).
Re:Informative? (Score:4, Insightful)
LA to SF: 344 miles.
Paris to Marseille: 486 miles.
The TGV Med does that in 3 hours. And yes, this includes stops along the way. It's actually faster than air travel, if you include the delays inherent to flying (check-in, security, moving between the airport and the city center, etc.).
Hell, that's why the French built the TGV in the first place: France is the largest country in western Europe, and significantly larger than any single American state. It's "small" when compared to the entire US, but it's still pretty damn big. So you need fast trains.
So really, the distance argument doesn't really hold, especially for places like California where state-wide population density is similar to France. The real reason why Americans don't have a decent inter-city rail system is that you simply can't do that without planning and initial funding from a central government authority, and as we all know that's anti-American.
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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I don't think anyone's suggesting a high-speed train from NY to San Francisco. There are parts of the US (like the Eastern seaboard, California, etc.) where there are large cities reasonably close to each other at distances where high-speed rail would be feasible. It would make perfect ec
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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 unli
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Interesting)
I do (I'm Swedish). I once visited California, and going there was an interesting experience. We changed planes in New York. The travel time to New York from Sweden was about eight hours, which isn't so strange, as the Atlantic is a large ocean. The interesting part was flying to San Francisco, which took six hours. In other words, we had only got about half the way when we arrived in New York.
From that experience, I'd say that the main problem in covering the entire US with a HS rail network are the vast expanses of (comparably unpopulated) land in the Rocky Mountains and surrounding area. After taking off from New York, We reached the Detroit area after less than one hour IIRC, and Chicago less than one hour after that. But then, there were a lot of nothingness, first an endless grid of farms, and then mountains and desert in the rockies before finally reaching California.
California could probably have a HS rail network, and so could the east coast. But the land in between is probably too large to hope for a HS rail network anytime soon. Maybe if/when the costs of maglev go down it could be done, but before that I don't think so. Besides, I don't think people would be willing to spend 24 hours on a high-speed (250 km/h, about 150 mph) run from coast to coast. A speed of 500 km/h (300 mph), cutting the trip to 12 hours, would be more tolerable.
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No offense - but no you don't, and your account makes that quite clear.
If you get south of that line, you pre
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, never been on a real train I see.
Something like the shinkansen is far more pleasant and convenient to ride than a typical plane (especially these days). Due to the speed difference, the plane is probably a better bet for LA-NYC, but for any kind of medium distance travel (e.g. up/down the coast, NYC-Philly-Chicago), I'd kill for a US system like the shinkansen/TGV.
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Neither do I. But down here in Texas, railroads are making a strong comeback - many OTR drivers are leaving because of the high price of gasoline as well. Here in Dallas, DART rail is quite successful and spreading it's tentacles all over the metroplex.
The whole argument of population density here in the States is a load of sheep. The United States has roughly the same land area as China, and likewise, has a majority of high population density tilted on the East coast.
Whe
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I'm just wondering about the accelerati
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You mean Here? [thepiratebay.org]
Re:Physics is a bitch isn't it (Score:5, Funny)
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...
A perfect vacuum would be quite expensive, but we could lower the pressure significantly by running the train at a higher elevation. Now, 5 mile high tracks are going to be a problem, so we are going to have to find a way to get the train up there without having to build an elevated track.
Perhaps if we put "wings" on the sides, when the train worked up enough speed, it might lift itself up to an elevation with lower pressure.
That just might work.
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Just suspend them from a geostationary orbital platform with buckytubes.
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They could try merely an enclosed tunnell, it keeps the moving air in front of you, instead of having it shoot off in all directions.
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Fluids don't work that way. If there's air in the tunnel, the tunnel walls will create friction due to the no-slip condition [wikipedia.org]
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PHYSICS DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY
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There is still a limitation on speed. As the train approaches earth orbital velocity (abut 7.75 km/sec ), the centripedal force approaches the force of gravity (excuse my sloppy language), the passengers become weightless, and some will get "space-sick" ans start barfing all over the place.
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25000 hp sustained is a lot (Score:2)
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A gasoline engine is only about 25% efficient, so the dragster has to dump at least 24,000 hp as heat from a much smaller volume. However, top fuel d
And yet (Score:3, Informative)
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Yep, and especially in France, 50% of the time of a journey is spent getting to the station, waiting for the train, waiting for a connection, waiting for the industrial action to be over etc...
The speed of the train (just like the speed of a car) is just one piece of the puzzle. What people want is fast and easy door to door travel.
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By the same token, increasing that percentage to, say, 12% will solve a lot more problems that you think. Why? Places where rail is most commonly used is in very concentrated areas. Coincidently, the same places would likely have large payoffs in terms of taking on more passenger traffic even if, as a proportion of all passenger traffic, it is comparatively small.
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If it would be useless, you would expect the trains to run empty. I hardly believe they do. In addition, all public transport systems share this problem, including airplanes, buses and ferries. In your world, only cars and motorcycles would be useful.
Demoralising pointe of the story (Score:2, Funny)
Life is choochoo - all aboard!
Time for some speed holes (Score:5, Funny)
And they would have beat the overall record, except that at the last second they decided to add an aftermarket spoiler, a 40,000 watt subwoofer and ground effects.
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The TGV already has ground effects*, you insensitive clod!
(*Unlike a ricer's, however, the TGV's ground effects actually work.)
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Yea, but they also added a "VTec" and "Type-R" stickers, so that should compensate for the exra load. =)
Watch the Video (Score:5, Interesting)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Bel_LcjZg [youtube.com]
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socialist horsewash (Score:5, Funny)
in america, each person is an individual, with their own car. or preferably, SUV, since cars tend to get smashed. also SUVs can go 'offroading', an enjoyable diversion that reddens the blood coursing through the veins of every freedom loving american, alone on the frontier, conquering nature for the benefit of human civilizaton.
enough of these cheese eating wine sipping communards and their piffle trains. let them all get tuberculosis in the over crowded rat cans called 'passenger cars' and wallow in their dying economy as it goes down a black hole to overspent big-government ruin and waste.
au revoir, les suckers!
Alright, lets get this out of the way... (Score:2, Funny)
Magnets versus Wheels (Score:3, Interesting)
One little detail has me curious: TGVs, though electric, still use locomotives to push and/or pull the train, a design feature that's been around since the first steam trains in 1833. I seem to recall "futurists" like Arthur Clarke claiming that the train of the future would use lots of small motors connected to each wheel instead of one big one in a locomotive. Not practical?
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Even the next TGV will abandon the locomotive principle.
The top of the wheels should make a sonic boom (Score:2)
the top of the wheels go twice the speed of the train, and even faster if there is any slippage. Since the train wheels actually dip below the level to f the track the top of the train wheel is actually going even faster than twice the train velocity.
so at 350MPH the tops are going faster than 700 mph.
They are damn close to the speed of sound, and presumably the peak speed was higher than the average speed.
Moreover as they go up in altitude th
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Re:Magnets versus Wheels (Score:4, Interesting)
For those of us that aren't metrically challenged (Score:4, Informative)
More rail development is needed (Score:5, Insightful)
The major problem is being crammed in with a lot of other people, some of whom may not be at all polite or tolerable. Security on such trains needs to be well maintained, and probably different cars with a people density/cost tradeoff. The Dallas light rail system (DART) which opened up a few years ago started on a good note - the major problem was too many people wanting to ride it from too far out. In theory, this might be handled with running more lines in parallel as the rail system gets closer to the center of the city - it's an interesting problem. (Of course, the expense of putting a rail system through a city not designed to accomidate it is non-trivial...)
Regardless, I think the more efficient resource utilization of trains makes them a no-brainer for long term development. The US is lamentably far behind - Amtrack is stuck playing second fiddle to freight trains and has abysmal performance (I'm probably biased as I was once 17 hours late on a train...). Freight rail and passenger rail need different tracks and independent scheduling - freight can move more slowly over rougher tracks, but passenger rail needs to be rapid.
I have always wondered if a properly designed and implemented rail system across the US would be cheaper than air travel (and not all THAT much slower, for bullet trains, particularly given delays airports can introduce...) I guess it's the old bootstrap problem - no money to lay down tracks because there is no guarantee of return on investment, while air travel already has massive inertia behind it and a lot of financial clout to use on the political system.
I hope someday we can muster the political will to build a rail infrastructure the way we have built a highway infrastructure, because there may well come a time when raw materials are too expensive to make building massive car fleets and replacing them every few years economically viable. It would be nice to have a fast, inexpensive way to travel that is actually able to provide reliability.
AmTrak (Score:3, Informative)
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.
357.2 mph, not 350 (Score:2)
What is... (Score:2)
What's the environmental impact of these machines? (Score:5, Interesting)
A passenger jet, supposedly, harms the environment as much per passenger, as five passenger cars would over the same distance — if you ignore the impact of building and maintaining the roads.
What's the impact of these trains — including the building and maintaining of the suitable tracks?
One must also note, that the overall (door-to-door) speed advantage, these machines seem to have over airplanes at short and medium distances, is due to the much simpler security/registration procedures, the passengers have to go through to board them. It is not the technology, that requires us to come to the airport 2 hours prior to departure...
What upsets me, is that American "Acela" train can also run pretty fast (even if not as fast as these bullet-trains) — but is not, because the tracks aren't suitable for higher speeds. The moron-run Amtrak has purchased these wonder-trains without improving the tracks, so most of the speed you buy on Acela is due to it simply making less stops between, say, New York and Boston, rather than due to it running appreciably faster.
Re:What's the environmental impact of these machin (Score:5, Insightful)
It's by far the cleanest widespread transportation means around. (yes, widespread around here, I live in France and my hometown is now 1 hour away from Paris, down from 2, which is pretty cool )
Re:What's the environmental impact of these machin (Score:5, Insightful)
The moron-run Federal government won't give Amtrak enough money to improve the tracks, because it's spending it all subsidizing highways (while somehow expecting Amtrak to make a profit) instead.
Don't blame Amtrak for its inability to compete against a subsidy!
Re:What's the environmental impact of these machin (Score:3, Insightful)
A passenger jet, supposedly, harms the environment as much per passenger, as five passenger cars would over the same distance -- if you ignore the impact of building and maintaining the roads.
Well, it depends on what you mean by "harms the environment." Let's look at something easy to quantify, fuel economy. According to Wikipedia, the Boeing 777-300ER [wikipedia.org] (to pick an example) carries 365 passengers a maximum of 7880 nautical miles (9068 miles) and carries 47,890 US gallons of fuel. That works out to 69 seat-miles per gallon, or equivalent to a single car with three passengers getting 23 mpg (or maybe you have a more efficient car - maybe it's two passengers in a car with 34.5 mpg). So in this cont
Re:What's the environmental impact of these machin (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes but does it run... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course not!
Yes, but . . . (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but in forward or reverse? Ba-zing!
Additional Coverage (Score:2)
Alstom's own press release [alstom.com], with some additional details on the train configuration and tests
Wikipedia's entry on land speed rail records [wikipedia.org]
USA Trains: Sad State of Affairs (Score:4, Interesting)
For anyone that hasn't rode trains in the US, I'll sum it up for you. They are a joke. Amtrak is a joke. 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. That's right, miles. There is little in the way of luxury or services with some exception and for a high price. There are some new trains coming on line in some areas, but in general they are worse than they were 100 years ago.
You might ask, "What about all those old movies I've seen with people traveling in elegant dining cars and trips on sleeping cars"? We did have more train routes in the past. There were also lots of light rail cars, electric and horse drawn before those. 'El' lines along with subways. We had elegant train stations (old Pennsylvania Station, NYC, demolished in the 60's for the new Madison Square Garden, &c.). The truth is most of these train lines were purchased by subsidiary companies of GM (General Motors) and the oil industry. They systematically dismantled them. Local routes were replaced by buses. Basically they encouraged the movement of every american to purchase their own automobile. At least one. Peoples experience with the public transportation would become frustrating enough that they would simply not want to deal with it. Those lines that were not completely converted to buses (Amtrak), have been intentionally mismanaged to the point that they are completely incompetent.
I would love to see the USA join the rest of the modern world with an intelligent approach to transportation, instead of building more highways, but it doesn't appear to be coming down the 'pike.
Believe it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Impressive, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason is simple: physical contact. At these very high speeds, the physical contact force between between the overhead wiring and pantographs on the train and the the steel wheels and the steel rail is ENORMOUS, requiring strong, expensive metals to keep physical wear as low as possible. Remember, the record was done on a very short train under extremely tight tolerance conditions not encountered in regular service.
Re: (Score:2)
me on the rails about 100 m to the west of the road. For a second I thought that I was standing still, a very strange feeling at that speed.
Was that before or after you slammed into a tree?
Re: (Score:2)
Been there, done that.
A stretch of the A1 autoroute parallels the LGV Nord line (Paris to Lille, Brussels and the Channel Tunnel). The speed limit is 130 km/h, and in favourable conditions the cops tolerate 160. And even at that speed, I've been passed by Porsches and things.
The TGVs go by at 300. It really does feel like you're standing still.
The train
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And this means? (Score:5, Funny)
So here's the idea: Some army (lets say the Germans) are chasing after the French. The French all jump on board their super TGV, which takes off down the track. The Germans stop on the track and say "Ha ha! They are running away! We can't catch their train, but we can just follow it to wherever they went, the fools!" So they start racing down the track following the French train. Meanwhile, far down the track, the French stop the train and get off, and go hide in the woods. The last one to go sets the train in reverse and opens the throttle. Now the last thing the Germans would expect is for the French train to come back, so they're caught completely off guard by the 400MPH TRAIN IN THE KISSER!
When you are truly skilled at fleeing, you can turn a retreat into an offensive.