China's CR450 bullet train clocks 453 km/h in pre-service tests

China's CR450 train hit 453 km/h during pre-service trials, surpassing its CR400 predecessor's 420 km/h and outpacing Deutsche Bahn's 405 km/h test record. Despite the impressive figure – particularly for British rail travelers eyeing autumn leaves nervously – operational speed will be 400 km/h, and 600,000 km of testing …

[Anonymous Coward]

Dissidents to Gulags in record time now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine the dissidents are "volunteering" to build the high speed railways lines.

[Rory B Bellows]

334.7 km/h

[IGotOut]

Wrong country, please troll harder.

[PCScreenOnly]

Appropriate Author

for this article

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Appropriate Author

Is there anything to be said for another mass, Ted?

[Fonant]

Serious acceleration!

650 km/h in seven seconds

That's 2.6 G - make sure all the passengers are sitting down and facing the direction of travel before attempting this!

[Anonymous Coward]

HS phew!

I'm not expecting these kinds of speeds from the UK's HS2, when it finally launches in 2080 or whenever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: HS speeds

They'll be limited to that of a man walking in front of the train with a red flag if all the objectors get their way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: HS phew!

In the 1820 it took 2 days from London to Manchester by stagecoach.

By 1880 a train could do it in 5 hours.

By 2005 Virgin Trains had taken it back up to 2 days!!

By 2025 we can't even buld the f**king track to run trains so it's back to the buses!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: London to Manchester

and

By 2025 we can't even buld the f**king track to run trains so it's back to the buses!

I went from London to Manchester by train on Tuesday, 2 hours and a couple of minutes.

Coming back was a shitshow though. We sat outside the monstrosity of 1960's Euston for almost 20 minutes. Notwork Fail couldn't find a platform free at 22:00.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: HS phew!

"I'm not expecting these kinds of speeds from the UK's HS2,"

To be (a little!!) fair, it's a lot harder to build long, straight tracks with only very gentle curves to achieve those speeds in a small and fairly crowded country, especially when there are legal processes to follow which forbid just bulldozing through whatever happens to be in your way ;-)

On the other hand, hats off to the Chinese engineers for being able to achieve those speeds with wheels on a track. It really does seem to be pushing the boundaries of physics/engineering/materials science in this layman’s eyes.

[MajDom]

I don’t get the “dwarves” part. 400 km/h doesn’t exactly dwarf 320 km/h in France — that’s hyperbole.

[captain veg]

Re: hyperbole

That was my first reaction too. But air resistance increases with the square of velocity, so it's not a linear comparison.

-A.

[MachDiamond]

"that’s hyperbole."

The Campaign for Equal Heights takes exception to the dwarf reference as well.

[werdsmith]

I enjoy riding HS1 trains across Kent at 190mph, but even at that speed I am a little uneasy about passing so close to solid stationary objects. Another 90mph on top of that sounds quire scary.

[Christoph]

Absolutely. My first reaction was imagining what might happen if the slightest thing went wrong. If something derailed it that train could demolish acres of buildings down to the foundations.

[John Brown (no body)]

It's not as if the driver is steering it and might be having a bad day :-) A derailment at anything over 30mph is likely to have some fatalities and most trains even in the UK can outstrip that speed on the straights, down hill, with a following wind.

[Paul Herber]

Just one thing. Er, don't stick your head out the window.

[Ken Shabby]

And hope the loo is not straight to track!

[Fonant]

"China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

That's 2.6 G!

Make sure all passengers are seated and facing the direction of travel before attempting this.

[tip pc]

Just imagine if we could do that in the UK

Japan's maglev is forecast to cut Tokyo to Osaka travel time from 150 minutes (on the already speedy Tokaido Shinkansen) to around 67 minutes

320 miles in 2.5 hours would be amazing.

Imagine London to Edinburgh in under 3 hours or even under ~2 hours with the newer faster maglevs.

For many reasons we won’t get that here.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: Just imagine if we could do that in the UK

The reasons you won't get that here are multiple and good. For instance:

* It would only work if everybody on the train wanted to go from London to Edinburgh. Relatively few do, and slowing down for intermediate stops removes a lot of the time benefit of higher maximum speeds.

* Maglevs need entirely new and separate infrastructure. Where, exactly, would they run to in London and Edinburgh?

[Roland6]

Re: Just imagine if we could do that in the UK

>” Where, exactly, would they run to in London and Edinburgh?”

That is obvious from HS1 and HS2: into an existing terminus that is already operating at capacity.

The laugh about HS2 into Euston is that the use of tunnels to link HS2 to HS1 and build the intended through station on land reserved at Kings Cross was deemed too expensive, so they decided to build a new terminus at Euston on land that had to purchased etc…

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Just imagine if we could do that in the UK

"* Maglevs need entirely new and separate infrastructure. Where, exactly, would they run to in London and Edinburgh?"

Monorail-style overhead? Get The Boring Company is to dig a big tunnel?

Note icon in case anyone thinks I'm being serious -->

[MachDiamond]

Re: Just imagine if we could do that in the UK

"Monorail-style overhead? Get The Boring Company is to dig a big tunnel?"

You may be kidding but people in positions that can make those choices will propose them.

Cheapest to most expensive:

1. Ground

2. Elevated

3. Underground

4. any of the above with "maglev", "HSR" or "hyperloop" in the title.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: For many reasons we won’t get that here.

You only need TWO

1) NIMBYism

2) I'm not paying a penny so some rich dude in London can get to Edinburgh so that they can play Golf in 2.5 hours.

[Roland6]

Re: For many reasons we won’t get that here.

If you can afford to play golf, I doubt you’ll be taking the train, given it’s a further 2+ hours to Trump’s various courses…

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Just imagine if we could do that in the UK

The East Coast Main Line is already pretty fast. The costs of upgrading the much slower West Coast Main Line were so high that it was shelved.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Just imagine if we could do that in the UK

"Imagine London to Edinburgh in under 3 hours or even under ~2 hours with the newer faster maglevs."

I'm fine with 8 hours, overnight, while I sleep. Depart Friday night, bang around Scotland for the day and back to the station that night for the return and home Sunday morning.

[tmTM]

Slow poke America?

Perhaps those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? but it seems like America is trailing quite far behind with high speed rail?

A paltry 257 km/h? and only on some East coast lines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Slow poke America?

Yank here on that U.S. east coast nirvana area where we supposedly have 257 kph/160 mph trains. I take trains on the daily and our current goal is to not have multiple trains canceled every day with a resultant speed of 0 kph/0 mph. Here is the actual boilerplate text we see in the app and hear in the station announcements every day, “Riders should expect crowded conditions, skipped stations, delays and cancellations.” My goal is to just have a train that moves.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Slow poke America?

I guess the problem is that in the U.S. trains are probably considered communist/socialist and everyone should be using the car or flying.

I have seen lots of TV programs/documentaries where the train trundles up the high street or navigates major road intersections. At least in the UK etc we have segregated them from each other!

[MachDiamond]

Re: Slow poke America?

"I have seen lots of TV programs/documentaries where the train trundles up the high street or navigates major road intersections."

You have the videos of that one section in Oakland, CA where it does that (passenger). There are some freight lines that do that, but be fair, the train was there first and some monkey on meth in the city planning department thought either side of the tracks would be a good place for shops.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Slow poke America?

"Perhaps those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? but it seems like America is trailing quite far behind with high speed rail?"

The US is so far behind with public transportation on the whole and trains in particular that HSR shouldn't be on the menu. West of the Mississippi River, you are ok if you have lots of time and want to go between LA, SF or Seattle and Chicago. There's also a route from LA to Seattle up the West Coast. If it was more of a grid with connections in major cities with more than one train per day, that's the point where high speed rail could be discussed. Otherwise it's one HSR city pair at the expensive of 5-6 other more needed routes/schedules.

[Abbas]

Poor birds!

[breakfast]

It's alright the birds don't need to take trains if they don't want to; they can fly.

[Dave Pickles]

"China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

Really? I make that about 2.6G. A few passengers are going to spill their coffee at that acceleration, and don't even think about using the toilets..

[Persona]

Re: "China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

That's the least of your problems. If you were standing in the aisle when the train started, to all intents and purposes you would remain stationary till the door at the end of the aisle moved forward to meet you. If you were 10m from that door it would meet you at about 50mph.

[Filippo]

Re: "China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

Yup, which means that deploying this in the real world would require a system to make damn sure that every single living being or item on board is properly secured. I can't think of any way of doing this that wouldn't add at least a few minutes, and that's being wildly optimistic. You can just about manage that on rollercoaster rides, but only because nobody has luggage or pets or small children, and the rollercoaster has literally no space where a human can reasonably be except their seat, and they've just gotten off a queue where they've been looking for half an hour straight at what's going to happen.

It's far faster, easier, safer and cheaper to just accelerate at a speed that won't kill anyone, and take a few minutes to reach cruising speed. Which means that these absurd accelerations are basically good for nothing more than bragging. I do respect that, it's no mean feat, but it's not something that's ever going to happen on a passenger line.

[MachDiamond]

Re: "China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

"If you were standing in the aisle when the train started, to all intents and purposes you would remain stationary till the door at the end of the aisle moved forward to meet you. If you were 10m from that door it would meet you at about 50mph."

Nobody but some younguns with the butts on a seat will find that very fun to accelerate that fast and do tight curves at speed.

It's been ages since I looked, but there are plenty of studies on what 90% of people find not too uncomfortable in terms of acceleration. Those figures get used to plan speeds in curving sections of track and to develop time tables/route times.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: "China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

"Really? I make that about 2.6G."

Not really all that much below the experience of a Space Shuttle launch, which I think was about 3G. So, run that maglev up the side a mountain, and et voila, cheap access to space. Might need a bit of tweaking to the train carriages though and arriving at the station might be a bit tricky, more so on the return journey.

[MachDiamond]

Re: "China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

"So, run that maglev up the side a mountain, and et voila, cheap access to space."

It would be an awfully tall mountain. I'm not even sure that Pike's Peak would work.

[Charlie Clark]

It is impressive but the comparisons are flawed

Europe is small and densely populated so that additional increases in max speed are unlikely to make significant differences in journey times. When I travel to Hamburg or Munich, the fastest journeys are always made by having fewer stations. This is why recent developments in Europe (TGV and ICE both got new generatons this year) are focussing on greater efficiency, capacity and convenience.

China is much bigger, and in parts also extremely densely populated but also has a need to completely new lines between places that are geograhically separate. If you're going to build new lines anyway, then you can use new technology. This was/is the case with high-speed rail in Spain.

Japan is the odd one out here, but it started high-speed rail in the 1960s for political reasons. Speed is important there, but I think reliability is now a more important metric – and I spent last week an hour at the station waiting for a local train.

[SundogUK]

Re: It is impressive but the comparisons are flawed

Yes, China's success in this is largely down to the big spaces between built up areas where you can build straight line tracks and not give a shit about what the locals think.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember seeing the Japan's Maglev on Tomorrow's World back in the 80's. Is it actually any closer to the real world?

[Anonymous Coward]

re: Is it actually any closer to the real world?

Oooh, I don't know, maybe read the fucking article to find out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Working high speed maglev tech has been around for quite a while, the issue is the high cost. Germany tried to sell their transrapid system, from the 1990s until the early 2010s but couldn’t find a buyer other than China, who only wanted a very short airport connection, essential a demonstration track, and ultimately went with traditional high speed rail for the rest of the country.

[Ian Johnston]

The Transrapid maglev is an attraction system, like the old Birmingham Airport shuttle and unlike the JR repulsion system. It was, as you say, a commercial flop with only one sale (Shanghai) 23 years ago. The company folded in 2008.

[Charlie Clark]

It was never really a commercial product but once the political support disappeared for the larger of the two proposed routes because of the costs – Cologne to Dortmund via Düsseldorf – support for the other one – Munich to Munich airport collapsed. This would have been the shorter, but also far less commercially viable, project. Not only do you need entirely new "tracks" for the services, these tracks are even more sensitive to environmental conditions and vandalism (several complete closures of main lines this year). We're still due to get a new line to Dortmund, which will we be even closer to us than current one; though I'm less worried by the noise than the vibrations, But they're still working through the court cases of the planning applications…

And in the meantime, while rolling resistance on rails remains a problem for fast rail, wind resistance dominates at high speeds. However, successive generations of trains have improved efficiency by moving the motors to the wheels, and increasing capacity: rolling resistance increases marginally with weight but wind resistance is unaffected.

[Ian Johnston]

Nope. Complete money pit, completely impractical.

[MachDiamond]

ROI?

The ever increasing speeds seem more like D-waving than useful advancements. As the speeds go up, so does the cost and the risk. The excess money should be going into more infrastructure that can serve more people and not just premium service for the few.

The US is a prime example of HSR being more of a drain than a resource. There's so little passenger train service and it's so often hours late at its terminus that going faster is dubious. Many of the things that are required for HSR such as grade separations would speed up regular ~100mph service without the need for more expensive trackage and rolling stock. California already has train service running through the middle of the state and for far less that what's already been spent on the HSR boondoggle, the existing tracks could be 100% owned for passenger service and grade separated so trains could have a better on-time record and average much higher speeds. The dream of a train between LA and San Fran is already here, just really slow with tracks precariously running right next to the ocean in some places and only once per day.

It's not that HSR in the US would be a bad thing, but there's so much that could still be done to serve more of the country so there's passenger service at all should demand that money is allocated there first. It would also be handy if travel planning sites considered all modes of public transportation. I still find all sorts of regional/commuter rail that would get me directly from a long distance train to a place I'd like to go, but there isn't an easy way to find that without some serious sleuthing.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would have been a land speed record

in early 1935.

[FIA]

Let's be honest, we don't really have much use for it in the UK. The replacement bus service would still be limited to 60 mph.

[Dave Pickles]

China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds

That's about 2.6G. I bet more than a few passengers spilled their coffees.

[Fonant]

Serious acceleration!

"China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

That's 2.6 G - make sure all passengers are sitting down and facing the direction of travel before attempting this!

[Anonymous Coward]

282 MPH

Before anyone asks.

[VoiceOfTruth]

I look forward to similar disparaging vocabulary when quoting the UK press

>> State-backed mouthpiece Science and Technology Daily

How about oligarch tax-haven exile owned Daily Mail/Daily Telegraph.

Meanwhile here in happy Blighty, they can't even get the signalling to work reliably on the District Line. Or most other lines at times.

This green and pleasant land, this happy breed. Not many happy faces on the Victoria line when there's yet another occurrence of severe delays. But I don't read about that in the oligarch tax-haven exile owned Daily Mail.

[Ian Johnston]

Japan have been playing with their maglev for half a century now and it's still nowhere near practicable. Far too expensive, far too inflexible and far too vulnerable to earthquakes.

See slso: Amdahl's Law.

[youmiserablegit]

Another Great British invention...

That got taken over and commercialised by other countries.

Just search for "Eric Laithwaite magnetic levitation" on you tube - quite a few videos there.

I remember seeing his Royal Society Christmas Lecture way back in the '70s demonstrating maglev. I'm sure it was probably on Tomorrow's World as well.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: Another Great British invention...

A remarkable man. Such a shame that he blew it by going nuts about gyroscopes. See also: Martin Fleischmann and "cold fursion".

[Winkypop]

The Royal Horticultural Society

The RHS has announced an immediate plant breeding scheme to develop High Speed Leaves.

[Paul Herber]

Re: The Royal Horticultural Society

They will surely take over from trunk roads.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: The Royal Horticultural Society

There's less need since Beech-ing closes all the branch lines.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speed to time saving isnt linear

There’s often a misunderstanding of the effect of speed increases on time saving over fixed distance.

You get diminishing returns and far greater risk (stopping distance, a squaring of mass resulting in higher kinetic energy, power needed etc)

Imagine the below scenario of how much time saving you get on a 100km distance for each 10kmh increase (each being much more costly and risky than the last)

60 km/h → 100 min

70 km/h → 86 min (14 min)

80 km/h → 75 min (11 min)

90 km/h → 67 min (8 min)

100 km/h → 60 min (7 min)

110 km/h → 55 min (5 min)

120 km/h → 50 min (5 min)

It’s why, paradoxically, breaking the speed limit driving is usually an incredibly bad risk/reward when you consider the mediocre time saving vs risk of accident, fine and cost to create the higher KE needed to increase the already high speed

[werdsmith]

Re: Speed to time saving isnt linear

Because they go on non-stop routes longer than 100km in some countries I guess.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Speed to time saving isnt linear

About the only plus is running the service normally at a slower speed and being able to go a bit faster if delayed...assuming of course that you are so delayed that you have lost your slot and are now following a slower, stopping train

[Roland6]

Re: Speed to time saving isnt linear

Also there is the other effect on capacity: the higher the speed the lower the capacity, even then capacity can be further constrained by the number of platforms at terminuses. It’s why HS2 are now down playing the capacity increase.

[captain veg]

Re: Speed to time saving isnt linear

> breaking the speed limit driving is usually an incredibly bad risk/reward

I have found this myself by direct experience.

More than 20 years ago now, before Nic Sarkozy discovered the money-making potential of serious speed limit enforcement, I had a Honda Super Blackbird (unrestricted), at the time the fastest production motorcycle, and covered a lot of autoroute miles at outrageously illegal speeds. And I found myself continually re-overtaking slow vehicles because of the frequent fuel stops. It took a while for the truth to dawn, that ten minutes in a service station costs you a massively more in distance when you're travelling at 250kmh than at 130, and you have to stop a lot more often because you're burning fuel at a furious rate.

These days I tend to take the TGV.

-A.

[upsidedowncreature]

Re: Speed to time saving isnt linear

" a squaring of mass resulting in higher kinetic energy"

Kinetic energy is 0.5 * m * v^2, although I appreciate the point you're making.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Speed to time saving isnt linear

"60 km/h → 100 min

120 km/h → 50 min (50 min)

While I understand the point you are making, it really depends on so many other factors too, such as total distance travelled, number of stops, how quickly and safely the train can slow dons to stop and get back to cruising speed from stop etc.

HS2 is usually quoted as being a boondoggle, at it the headline speeds pretty much are. It's real benefit as moving the long distance services from the more or less "at capacity" west coast line. Maybe if they'd just gone ahead and said they were building a new "express" track and gone with the limited stop, 125+MPH trains and level of engineering, it would have been much cheaper for pretty much the same effect. (I'm neither a surveyor nor a rail engineer, so I'm just pissing in the wind with an "opinion" here :-))

[SonWon]

Stolen Tech

Using stolen tech!

[Ken G]

Deutsche Bahn's ICE reached 405 km/h on the Erfurt-Leipzig/Halle line

DB have to go faster to make up for delays.

[Marc 13]

"the world's fastest" ... EMU"

I suspect a few of Rod Hull's interviewees might beg to differ.

[Petalium]

Trains in Europe don’t need to be faster, they just need to be on time. A nice train journey through Europe with a nice restaurant wagon attached is ideal.

[Jim84]

Acceleration vs Top Speed

The Chinese (and everyone else) would be better off engineering trains that can accelerate faster up to 250 or 300kph, rather than ones with a top speed of 400kph.

The Shanghai maglev could get people from one of the airports to the city centre (if it ran all the way) in about 10 minutes. You'll see lots of videos of the internal speedometer hitting 400kph, and people assume this is why the journey is so quick. But it is the fact that it gets up to this speed quickly that cuts the journey time. I think the French TGV takes 15 minutes for a train to get up to 320kph.

Putting a linear induction motor in the track of a train with regular steel wheels could enable much faster acceleration and deceleration. A bunch of metro trains such as the Skytrain in Vancouver already use this technology. However they use it to cope with steeper gradients rather than to achieve maglev like acceleration.

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Re: Acceleration vs Top Speed

But greater acceleration is inversely related to passenger comfort. The acceleration that you experience when pushed back in an airliner seat at take-off is about 0.3g. For that to be safe, everyone has to be seated, belted in, tray table folded up, loose items in the seat pocket, yadda yadda. That's not what people travelling with their luggage, children, dogs, laptops and coffee cups are looking for on a train journey.

[imanidiot]

High speed rail is easy.

Easy if you don't have to worry about an existing rail network, don't have to worry about buying out peoples property to put in new lines, don't have to deal with Victorian era infrastructure and monumental bridges and buildings, don't have to deal with taking into account noise and other issues for those living in the area, don't have to worry about cities being close together and necessitating lots of start-stop running. In other words, high speed rail is easy(/ier) if you're not in Europe.

With all due respect to China, achievements like this are mostly down to being able to build the modern rail infrastructure in a way that most of Europe simply can't do and the US refuses (mostly for reasons only the US seems to comprehend).

[John Brown (no body)]

In the UK, very much this. There is rail infrastructure still in use that was built by Stephenson, Brunel etc at the very dawn of the rail network we have today. Especially just down (and up) the road from where I am, what with the Darlington & Stockton Railway being a half hour drive down the road and Stephensons workshop just up the road.

[Blackjack]

Test environments usually do not meet real world conditions.

In other words lets see how it works when everything is not set up to make the train run as fast as possible and actual real passengers are using the train in real life.

Also let's not even start with maintenance, a fast train that breaks all the time is not preferred to a slow trrain that doesn't break much.

[Anonymous Coward]

What, nothing about the Hyperloop ? I'm sure it's going to make all those old fashioned trains look slow, any day now !

[frankvw]

Impressive. But should you?

I applaud the technical feat achieved here. But imagine a crash at that speed. Which, given the principles of statistics, will happen sooner or later if regular service is performed at velocities like this. It's not going to be pretty.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Impressive. But should you?

Neither is a plane crash, yet we still use air travel and statistically it's a very safe way to travel. Of course air travel has lots of regulations that (in theory, looking at you Boeing) make it this safe.

It's all just a risk/benefit analysis. Ultra-high-speed rail would need similar safety precautions to minimise risk. Whether or not that happens is a different question.

[koborn]

SNCF got there years ago-

Before the TGV line to Strasbourg went into service nearly 20 years ago they ran tests with a modified TGV set: changed the gearing, added some inter-car aero shielding, and most importantly increased the overhead line tension - the passage of the train pantograph produces a soliton wave in the wire, which if wrongly positioned can touch the train roof: a Bad Idea. (this is why TGVs have the active pantograph near the back).

Result: 500kph. During this trial, they set a full champagne flute on a table, then turned off all the stabilisation systems. Nothing happened.

But 500kph is not needed in France, the distances between stops don't warrant it (which is one reason HS2 is such a politically-motivated boondoggle: the overriding demand was "a faster train that the French", ignoring the evident fact that it is irrelevant for the London-Birmingham run.)

[MachDiamond]

Re: SNCF got there years ago-

"But 500kph is not needed in France, the distances between stops don't warrant it (which is one reason HS2 is such a politically-motivated boondoggle: the overriding demand was "a faster train that the French", ignoring the evident fact that it is irrelevant for the London-Birmingham run.)"

More D waving. Once a train can go from A to B in the same amount of time it would take to go the same route by air, counting from entering the airport to exiting the airport on the other side, there's no point in going faster and instead adding more service. I believe there is a certain value to not being fondled and having small valuable articles removed from your luggage for you that going a bit slower is fine. Flying is also more stressful. If you miss your flight, you're screwed. If you miss a train, chances are you can exchange your ticket for the next one. If there are plenty of departures, getting the next one isn't as big of a deal as trying to rebook a flight. No charge to bring a bag.