vitesse

TGV world speed record - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Operation V150, where 150 again refers to a target speed in metres per second, was a series of high speed trials carried out on the LGV Est prior to its June 2007 opening. The trials were conducted jointly by SNCF, TGV builder Alstom, and LGV Est owner Réseau Ferré de France. Following a series of increasingly high speed runs, the official speed record attempt took place on 3 April 2007.[1][2] The top speed of 574.8 km/h (159.6 m/s, 357.2 mph) was reached at kilometer point 191 near the village of Le Chemin, between the Meuse and Champagne-Ardenne TGV stations, where the most favorable profile exists.

I watched this online, on a not very good quality streaming video, but it was still impressive. It was only while reading the Wikipedia page I realised that this train was going at a significant proportion of the speed of sound. It was the “150 metres a minute” thing that did it.

I don’t think we’ll ever see 600kph service trains ever; the energy and safety implications are just too high. However it’s nice to see the French continuing the grand tradition of insane railway speed record attempts.

a matter of emphasis

BBC NEWS | England | North Yorkshire | Car driver dies in rail collision
A driver has died in Yorkshire when his car crashed through a fence on to a rail track and was hit by a train travelling at about 100mph.

This bugs me. Whenever there’s one of these “car going onto a railway” accidents, the subsequent press stories are always written as if it was somehow the train’s fault…

BBC NEWS | Five injured in bus bridge crash

BBC NEWS | England | Tees | Five injured in bus bridge crash

Five people were injured, including a 12-year-old boy, when a double-decker bus ploughed into a railway bridge slicing off its roof.

It’s probably futile to point out that on the railways, drivers have to know the route they’re going to be driving, in considerable detail. If they don’t know the route or the characteristics of the train their driving (e.g. whether it will fit under the bridges on the route) they don’t drive the train.

While that level of route knowledge would probably be overkill for road transport, ensuring some form of route (and vehicle) knowledge for drivers of commercial vehicles would prevent many accidents of this type from happening. And save a lot of milage from being wasted by people driving lorries and buses around unfamiliar areas without maps.