TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

This is not an official world speed record for conventional rail vehicles yet, since it was not an official record attempt. That will be made later, possibly this month or in April. It was “merely” another run in a series of trials targeted at exploring the very high speed behaviour of the traditional wheel/rail system.

The French high-speed TGV train broke its own rail speed record when it reached 553 kilometres per hour, the daily Le Parisien reported Wednesday.

[Quoted from French TGV breaks world speed record , German News, Germany, Expatica ]

A photo is available here.

I’m pretty sure the final “real” record attempt will be well covered by the media … And I’m pretty sure that if they can, they will try to beat the Maglev records of 581 km/h. An Alstom spokesperson was quoted as saying that they were trying to reach “550-570 km/h”, which contrasts with the original announcement of “540 km/h” made last December. To me, this looks like the trials are going better than expected and the Maglev records, maybe even the “magic barrier” of 600 km/h, seems within reach.

… and maybe even before California does … (not that that would be particularly difficult, the way things are looking now).

According to a report in The Ledger, the new Governor of Florida seems to have a much more favorable view of the Florida High-Speed Rail project and things might be moving forwards again - finally.

Eurostar currently serves two main routes: London - Paris and London - Brussels, both with intermediate stops on some trains. There are also seasonal services to French Ski destinations (winter) and Avignon (summer), plus daily service to Disneyland Paris. With the opening of phase 2 of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link high speed line from London St. Pancras station (the new international terminal in London, replacing Waterloo station) and the Channel Tunnel on November 14 of this year and the corresponding reduction of travel times between London and Paris to 2 hours 15 minutes, the focus of service expansion and improvement might shift to the addition of service to new destinations.

One obvious candidate of such an expansion would be to finally start service to cities north of London - this was already planned for the original opening of the Channel Tunnel service, but the idea was then abandoned because it did not look promising enough. The connection through/around the city of London would have been cumbersome at best. But with the new high speed line that terminates on the north side of London, such connections will become much better - there will even be a direct link between the high speed line and the West Coast Main Line (already visible on Google’s satellite images) to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and points north. So a direct service between Paris and, say, Birmingham should be very easy to implement. Taking current Virgin Trains timetables as a guide, travel time between London and Birmingham is around 1 hour 30 minutes with 3 intermediate stops. Thus, a nonstop trip between Paris and Birmingham should be around 3 hours and 45-50 minutes.

East Coast service would also be possible, but would probably - at least initially - require a reversal of the trains at St. Pancras. Also, the option seems less attractive since cities on the ECML are smaller than on the WCML (and Scotland is too far away for attractive travel times).

One obstacle for starting services on routes with lower expected ridership is the fact that until now, the only trainsets allowed through the Channel Tunnel are the original Eurostar trainsets that consist of 2 motor cars and 18 coaches. 7 additional trainsets were originally built for the “North of London” services with 14 instead of 18 coaches, but that still seems like a lot. Regular TGV trainsets used on domestic lines in France only have 8 coaches.

Maybe the North of London trains could also be scheduled to stop at Stratford, Ebbsfleet and Ashford - at the same time, the London - Paris trains could run nonstop and thus provide an even more attractive travel option.

Other options for new Eurostar destinations would be service to Amsterdam over the new HSL Zuid line or possibly service east of Brussels to Cologne and other points in Germany. For these services, new trainsets would have to be built however - since the currently existing trains are not able to run over those lines.

All in all, the future looks promising - as all the various high speed rail lines in Europe are growing together and are starting to form a truly continental network.

Today, I ran across a reference to the “Railteam” alliance and thought “what the heck is that? Never heard that before”. So I did some research and was able to find the following information in a Eurostar press release:

The Railteam alliance will offer travellers high-speed, high-quality travel across European borders. As well as Eurostar, other members include:

• Deutsche Bahn - Germany
• NS and HSA - Netherlands
• ÖBB - Austria
• SBB - Switzerland
• SNCB - Belgium
• SNCF - France

The rapid development of high-speed lines across northern Europe, linking major cities, has created the opportunity for an alliance under the working title ‘Railteam’, which has a vision to provide travelers with:

• Seamless connections at stations
• Through ticketing and fares - one ticket/fare for a through journey
• Easy access to timetables, information, booking and train services
• Real time journey information
• Universal, high-quality standards of customer service and facilities, such as on-board internet access

[Quoted from Pan-European ‘Railteam’ alliance expands @ eurostar.com ]

(I wish we would see some of these “features” in the U.S. …)

Looks like the whole thing is modeled after the alliances that already exists between various airlines (e.g. Star Alliance, SkyTeam, OneWorld, etc.). It will be interesting to follow the developments in the future - after all, a couple of years down the road, international rail travel is supposed to be deregulated in Europe.

It appears that the “Railteam” alliance does not currently have a website - there is something at railteam.com, but it does not appear to be related.

I meant to write an article about upcoming new rail lines that are scheduled to open in Europe this year, but I just ran across this piece by columnist Ed Perkins (written as part of a more generic travel article, so you might not have noticed the rail content …), where he sums up the most important parts quite nicely.

Rail: Focus on Europe. The Europeans remain serious about high-speed rail, and you’ll see some major improvements this year: The last remaining high-speed segment between London and the “Chunnel” will open late this year, cutting 15-20 minutes off the already spectacular rail times between London and Brussels (less than two hours) or Paris (a bit over two hours). From the new station at St. Pancras to the Continental terminals, travel will be entirely on high-speed tracks, with speeds up to 186 mph.

France will open most of the LGV Est line from Paris to near Strasbourg, with a branch connecting to Frankfurt, Germany. Belgium and the Netherlands will open high-speed links, cutting train time from Amsterdam to Paris to just three hours. Spain expects to complete most of the high-speed line between Barcelona and Madrid this year. Late in the year, Switzerland will open the new 20-mile low-level Lotschberg tunnel between Brig and Bern, cutting an hour off travel times between Italy and Germany.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to talk a lot and do little about high-speed rail. At best, we’ll see a few improved (but conventional) speeds on a few Midwestern Amtrak routes. The main improvements will be in local public transit and commuter systems — welcome, to be sure, but not a substitute.

[Quoted from Expect higher hotel rates and more hidden fees (sfgate.com)]

I also like his comment about, well, the non-existent U.S. rail program. Although there might be some good news: Apparently, Senators Lautenburg, Lott, Inouye and Stevens are planning to re-introduce the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act next week - if you support this, call your senator to encourage him/her to support this bill!

Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Trent Lott (R-MS), Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
and Ted Stevens (R-AK) plan to re-introduce the Passenger Rail Investment
and Improvement Act next Tuesday.

[Quoted from an email newsletter from NARP]

Well, there must be other ways to finance this thing than always just by borrowing money, no? Almost everybody all around the world believes that High Speed Rail is infrastructure that is worth investing in - but in the car-centric United States, do people (or maybe I should say “the politicians”) still only believe in the “drive-and-fly”-mentality?

Sayonara High Speed Rail?

In a pre-speech briefing with reporters, the Schwarzenegger administration said that Schwarzenegger’s bond proposal would essentially max out the state’s borrowing capacity for the next decade. So what about the idea of a ballot measure asking voters to approve bonds to build a high speed rail system through the Central Valley? After all, it was supposed to have been on the ballot already, but kept getting postponed. Administration officials said today that the high-speed rail project should be derailed… again, and perhaps indefinitely.

Quoted from Capital Notes- From KQED’s John Myers: State… of the State of the State

This morning, Taiwan became a member of the growing list of countries that offer high speed rail service:

Taiwan’s long-delayed high-speed rail system debuted Friday, its 12-car caravan of sleek orange and white coaches gliding out of a suburban Taipei station right on time at 7 a.m.

[Taiwan’s high-speed train debuts after long delays (SignOnSanDiego.com)]

The operation mixes Japanese Shinkansen-type trains with European-built infrastructure - and in an ironic twist of history, the Japanese-built trains are actually operated by French and German drivers …

And a series of commercial disputes since the project began in 1980 has produced a remarkable hodgepodge: French and German train drivers who are allowed to speak only English with Taiwanese traffic controllers while operating Japanese bullet trains on tracks originally designed by British and French engineers.

[Taiwan’s Bullet Trains Can’t Outrun Controversy (New York Times)]

The new line opened amidst concerns about safety and controversy about the high cost of construction ($15 billion). Trains run on a new purpose built right-of-way stretched along the west coast of Taiwan, connecting the two main cities, Taipei and Kaohsiung, with intermediate stations at major towns and cities along the way.

In addition to the TGV East High-Speed line that is being completed right now and that will go in service in June of 2007, two other high-speed rail projects are currently under way in France and a couple of links for more information:

• The TGV Rhine-Rhone line, eastern branch (connection from east of Dijon towards Belfort/Mulhouse)
  Official Website of "LGV Rhin-Rhone" (French/English)
  Blog about TGV Rhin-Rhone construction (French)
• The new Transpyreneen link from Perpignan to Figueras in Spain (linking the French and Spanish high-speed systems).
  This line is built by the private TP Ferro group, so there is no official RFF website. TP Ferro does not seem to have a website. Here is the Wikipedia entry. The french version has a bit more information.

Regarding the former one, here is a PDF showing current areas of construction as of December 2006. Work had started back in July of 2006 and the line is scheduled to be opened at the end of 2011.

According to news reports, Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation finally gained government approval for the high speed rail system and will start trial services in January. They have not yet decided on a final launch date.

The Taiwanese system is based on Japanese Shinkansen technology, but according to reports, some French consultants were also involved in the start-up of the system.

Taiwan’s high-speed rail system to start trial services next week - MSN-Mainichi Daily News

Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. plans to launch trial services of the island’s high-speed rail system next week, after the government approved the system’s launch following numerous delays, a company official said Thursday.

The company still hasn’t decided on the official launch date because it wants to take public opinion into account during the trial, said a Taiwan High Speed Rail public relations official who declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

The trials will run from Jan. 5 to Jan. 14 between Taipei and Kaohsiung, shortening travel time between the island’s two main cities to 90 minutes from at least four hours.

The other day, there was an opinion piece in the Fresno Bee, where Russ Minick remembers having taken a trip to Japan 30 years ago and took his first ride on a “Bullet Train”. And ever since, he’s been wondering whether California will ever get High Speed Rail …

There always seems to be a more urgent need. And I begin to wonder whether our elected leaders will ever find the wisdom and the courage to get high-speed rail done.

I read the other day that the last of the generation of locomotives and cars that I rode in Japan have been retired from service. Some of them have been in museums for a decade.

Meanwhile, in the so-called Golden State, we wait. And wait. And wait. And we call that leadership.

[FresnoBee.com: Other Opinion: RUSS MINICK: Will state ever get high-speed rail? ]