[PRCo] HSR - France

[Fred Schneider]

I was looking at French timetables ... amazing performance.   
Yes, I know that they've set some remarkable speed records.  I remember the 206 miles per hour in 1955 when they had to open the train windows to get enough drag to pull the speed down to the point where it was safe to use air brakes of the period.   Five years later I saw that locomotive in Gare Lyon in Paris bearing a rather inconspicuous bronze plate commemorating the speed record.   Well, their most recent official record is 574.8 km/hr or 359.25 mph.   The Sky News video on line of that endeavor shows a jet plane chasing it!   WOW.

Of course test runs are never what we do in regular service.  The 127 mph with a Pennsy 4-4-2 in Ohio in 1902 or whatever wasn't typical.   And 359 miles per hour isn't normal running either.  

But I did just look at the timetables and they are amazing.....

The airline distance ... straight line distance ... is slightly over 400 miles from Paris to Marseilles on the Mediterranean sea coast.   The railway mileage is 489 miles (783 kilometers).   How fast do they do it in regular service?   Between 183 and 199 minutes.   That works out to an average speed of 131 straight-line miles per hour or 160 railway route miles per hour from terminal to terminal for the fastest schedule!   The slowest gets you there 16 minutes later.     Not too damn shabby.  

Sometime in the last year Bill Volkmer ask what was the longest non-stop service in France.   Apparently there is service from Paris to Marseilles and this train did it in 2:50 but all I can find in the timetable today is 3:03 and longer.  Still it's equivalent to San Francisco - San Diego or Boston - Washington on a rocket sled.      

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W2aDMCOXhY&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn-zU66zhIs&feature=related


When you live in a nation where people do not throw deliberately throw grocery carts off bridges to try to hit trains or fire guns at them, or walk on to the railroad and sue the railroad because the train was there and hit them, you don't need to protect the railroad from idiots (or lawyers) ... look at this next one and observe that the French can run trains at 200 miles per hour without fencing off the farms next to the tracks and that one of the highway overpasses have 20 foot high walls to protect the railroad.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbKEeHzuBwc&NR=1

The next one is the 574 km / hr speed record

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yszy1wltw8&NR=1