Very High Speed
CRH3
China opened, yesterday, what is being referred to as the world’s first Very High-Speed rail line between Beijing and Tianjin. The 120km route will now take 30 mins to complete compared to the 70 mins it used to take, with speeds maxing out at 350 km/h. The line has taken just 3 years to build and complete, and this is their first of many Very High-Speed lines to be in operation.
So whilst China, and many other countries, can currently bask in the glory of the new railway revolution that is taking place, the US and UK lag so very far behind using still relying on their slow-speed inter city rail and clinging to the addiction of fossil fuels.
ICE derails in Germany
An ICE 3 train leaving Cologne, Germany derailed on Wednesday (9 July). The unbelievable aspect of this story is that preliminary investigations suggest that an ‘incident’ affecting a wheel axle shortly after leaving Frankfurt Airport station may have caused the derailment; the line between Frankfurt and Cologne is the flag-ship line that sees trains doing in excess of 300 km/h; so this means that the unit that derailed was probably doing similar speeds along this line during it’s journey between Frankfurt and Cologne. This has naturally left many people feeling somewhat nervous about what could have happened and forced the Public Prosecutor’s office to launch an investigation into the incident on the basis that DB may have known about this during the journey and failed to stop the train to inspect it thus putting passengers and the national rail network in danger.
Double-headers
For reasons I haven’t quite figured out, there seems to be a considerable number of double-header freights trains passing by all the time - we live close enough to see plenty of freight trains passing. Other than the obvious under-powered reasons, most of these double-headers and ‘bankers‘ - you have one at the back pushing. Sometimes the formation is a coupled bank engine, othertimes they are uncoupled; The tracks have little or no gradient to bother the hauling loco, even in the surrounding area. So the only plausible explanation is simply too many underpowered locos
The next high-speed rail ink
China has started construction of the next high-speed rail line that will cover the 300km distance between Shanghai and Nanjing; it will take four years to build and when the line opens it will offer 24hour a day services between the two cities cutting the journey time to 74 mins from the current 120mins.
What I find amazing is that the services will be scheduled to be every three minutes during peak periods, this is roughly the same frequency that the metros are scheduled here in Prague except this will be on a high-speed. main line route.
In contrast I have been reading that the San Francisco to Los Angeles high-speed line might be in service by 2030; it will cover the distance of 550km in 2.5 hours with impressive average speeds of around 350km/h. However, China will be able to construct 75 km of track a year; the Californian line will be constructed an average of 27.5 km a year (on the assumption that the project goes ahead an starts in 2010). It is a pity it will take so long unless they can find a way to accelarate the construction method.
Praha - Bechovice
Shameless self-promotion of a misspent hour on Saturday
I must admit that this if my first, somewhat wobbly, attempt at YouTubing. Normally I would prefer to take photos, however, this time I thought I’d give this youtube thing a go. It is not an outstanding piece of video capture but then not much is on YouTube; but this is what it is all about, sharing the moment, and enjoying yourself; probably.
More talk of new UK lines
Yet more talk about planning new high-speed rail lines in the UK. Why don’t they stop talking and build, the 2012 Olympics are getting closer and the UK needs to benefit from this, not just London…
Rail bosses are to look at the possibility of building five new high-speed main lines as part of a review of the network’s future, Network Rail said.
Network Rail said it was to commission a study which would look into the feasibility of new lines along the UK’s busiest routes in what would amount to the largest track build since the 19th century.
The review, which will be announced on Monday, will also assess the need for high speed trains similar to the French TGV to cope with Britain’s growing number of rail users.
Question is: will they really bring TGV to UK or just look at France and say “That’s nice”. One thing that did strike me looking at the BBC article is that the routes are primarily focused on connecting the rest of the UK with London with little thought put in to cross-country routes - say linking Edinburgh and Glasgow, even going North in Scotland, or even connecting Birmingham with Bristol as an easier way of going North-South. This is one of those issues in France, you need to travel to Paris if you want TGV from the South West to South East Bordeuax to Marseille; whilst this is being rectified, someone else has made this “mistake” so maybe the UK should learn. Then again it is the feasibility of doing such cross country routes, are they actually used.
Track layer
There is an incredible amount of engineering works currently happening in and around Prague. The major developments in Prague are the building of a two core tunnel to Prague’s main station - that will allow faster and higher volumes of traffic from the East and North - plus the rebuilding of Prague main station. The results are certainly an improvement (smoother rails), but we are also getting to see a fair amount of engineering related traffic. This weekend I finally managed to get out and take some photos from my local station; this track laying truck-train was maneuvering itself to be disassembled after the weekend’s work. Interesting to actually see these things working, it is quite simply a large Tatra truck on rails with all but the front tyres on the track.
Its a bus/train
Interesting concept using the best of both worlds. It would be interesting to see the overhead powered version.
T3s in North Korea
Prague’s aging T3 tram fleet is slowly being rebuilt, replaced or retired. Some enterprising member of Prague’s city hall looks to have landed a deal that will give a new lease of life to 20 of the trams on the streets of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital. The first twenty reconditioned trams will give Prague 800,000 USD to spend, in return North Korea gets a reliable work horse to add to it’s existing fleet of Skoda trams.
