China reveals CRH 500 HST

[Jimbo.]

Given just how shoddy Chinese engineering can be, would anyone here want to do 500Km/h on it? I'll take my otherwise crappy C2C line if given the choice!

[Simpo Two]

You won't be laughing when they borrow a gazillion unrepayable pounds from the money tree to do it though

'Look at our new railway Angela, you see we're not dead yet. Nicolai, look at our... oh, he's gone'


(sorry, rambling off topic. Back to the Flying Takeaway. Or is that Frying Takeaway? Both seem to work)

[shirt]

Jimbo. said:

Given just how shoddy Chinese engineering can be, would anyone here want to do 500Km/h on it? I'll take my otherwise crappy C2C line if given the choice!

was just about to say similar. does anyone here buy/use chinese technology? would you want them to build you something capable of that speed which isn't supposed to blow up?

[Apache]

jbi said:

TheHeretic said:

Ah, I heard the opposite regarding the gauge, something about them being too narrow for the high speed stuff, and our tracks are basically too twisty and bendy to get to high speed. They did, I think, have a tilting train at one point, or came up with a design, or something, that alleviated the issue, but this was a few years ago. I'm no train buff.

The UK pioneered the tilting train technology to speed up through corners but I think it was scrapped due to technical problems and making passengers motion sick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Passenger_Tr...

Many successful tilting train designs have since been developed in other countries such as Japan and Italy who are more than happy to sell them back to us

The APT was perfect, too perfect and disorientated the passengers making them ill. It's legacy lives on in the Alstom Pendalino which was developed in Italy. It is still one of the best in the world.

[Apache]

Graebob said:

Forgive the slight thread derail (pun intended)

As a layman with basically 0 knowledge of rail infrastructure, to me it seems to almost be a waste of time to build high speed lines in the UK. In my admittedly un-knowledgeable head, it just seems that we are geographically too small to support a high speed infrastructure. Sure, we could make journey times between major cities quicker, but the massive investment involved to save such a relatively small amount of time seems to me to make it a bit of a waste. Every major high speed network I know of (again, limited knowledge here, I'm thinking of TGV and the Chinese) have vast distances to cover, where the time saving is significant and comparable to air travel. Aren't we just too small an island to support a high speed network?

Back on topic, 500kmh is an amazing thing, must be otherworldly actually being in a vehicle so close to the ground going that quickly.

Not too far from the truth. When Ariva took the Cross Country route over from Virgin it isolated the tilt systems on the Super Voyagers as they felt it more important to improve reliability than knock a couple of minutes off the journey time

Edited by Apache on Sunday 25th December 11:36

[jbi]

shirt said:

Jimbo. said:

Given just how shoddy Chinese engineering can be, would anyone here want to do 500Km/h on it? I'll take my otherwise crappy C2C line if given the choice!

was just about to say similar. does anyone here buy/use chinese technology? would you want them to build you something capable of that speed which isn't supposed to blow up?

China has more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined and is spending more money on it than the rest of the world combined.

They have had one fatal accident which resulted in the semi-permanent reduction in speeds for all CRH trains until the ENTIRE network was inspected and every piece of rolling stock brought back in for detailed examination.

They are taking safety very very seriously and even installed a man in charge of the railways who is anti-rail and pro-airline

[Engineer1]

TheHeretic said:

Simpo Two said:

Ah well you see we got complacent and lazy, and thought that making stuff was for mugs. So instead we borrowed money and bought in stuff from more industrious nations whose workers didn't get £30K pa and paternity leave. And that is how all the money ended up in China.

BTW the windows in photos 2 and 3 are different - two trains?

It is not that at all. The gauge of our tracks, and the way they wind through the country do not lend themselves to high speed lines. We do not have the 'banking' to enable high speed cornering, and all the other lovely stuff. For us to have a high speed railway, it will take a brand new line wherever it will run. Existing rail will not be sufficient. That will be fking expensive.

Too true, we got into the railway game early and built an "experimental/ Prototype" network, the rest of the world see how we did it and plan better to allow high speed travel etc.

Reading round on railways there are two "gauges" the rail separation, which is fairly standard and the loading gauge, the loading gauge being the available space a train can travel through so things like platforms bridges etc mean a wider or taller train can't be used because it won't fit through stations or under bridges.

[W124Bob]

BR marketing people screwed up the APT by forcing it into service about 12months to soon, the research/engineering bods needed just a little longer to sort techy stuff out and we would have had a world beater.The same basic tech then went to the Italians via Alstrom who gave us the Pendalino. Around half the origonal Voyager fleet where built as tilting units but it was far less reliable due the hydrualic pump sytems not being upto the job.When Arriva took over the Cross Country franchise within weeks they turned off the tilt system to improve reliabity and lower costs.Virgin have retained the working system as 90% of their routes are tilt enabled.

[jbi]

It's been spotted in the wild

[jbi]

Latest news suggests this particular example is running with 6 cars, and has an output of 22,800 kW

That's more than the V150 train which set the world record in 2007. It had 19,600 kW.

Edited by jbi on Tuesday 27th December 00:54

[Apache]

jbi said:

It's been spotted in the wild

[Talksteer]

Graebob said:

Forgive the slight thread derail (pun intended)

As a layman with basically 0 knowledge of rail infrastructure, to me it seems to almost be a waste of time to build high speed lines in the UK. In my admittedly un-knowledgeable head, it just seems that we are geographically too small to support a high speed infrastructure. Sure, we could make journey times between major cities quicker, but the massive investment involved to save such a relatively small amount of time seems to me to make it a bit of a waste. Every major high speed network I know of (again, limited knowledge here, I'm thinking of TGV and the Chinese) have vast distances to cover, where the time saving is significant and comparable to air travel. Aren't we just too small an island to support a high speed network?

Back on topic, 500kmh is an amazing thing, must be otherworldly actually being in a vehicle so close to the ground going that quickly.

I have a friend who has been working on the business case for HS2, the answer is that it doesn't really have one. The issue is that hight speed rail had specific purposes in the countries that adopted it:

In France they have the same population as the UK and twice the land area, their population is highly segregated into a number of large population centres with large distances between them. High speed rail displaced internal flying and due to the lower population density costs of building was lower. Aside from the population density argument the same is true in Germany.

In Spain they again have a much lower population density than the UK and where they installed high speed rail there was generally poor existing transport links along those corridors. Because of the low population density the lines were relatively cheap to put in and they also got EU help.

In Japan the population density is much greater than the UK and almost evenly distributed across the habitable areas of the nation. The Shinkansen has a ridership more like the Northern Line than any UK domestic line. The early lines replaced slow narrow gauge railways. Additionally while the early lines made sense the later ones were political creations and lost money.

China has massive populations centres several hundred miles apart, limited property rights, tons of surplus cash and little commercial accountability. Also a quick Google shows that China is apparently slowing down the speeds on some high speed lines to reduce wear, energy usage and to fit more trains in.

In the UK we have London and the South East which is a large population centre surrounds by a large sprawl of medium density population. Further north we have a number of medium population centres surrounded by medium population density. The problem is that the two population centres are not separated by enough distance that is makes sense for some to travel to a hub point to make a high speed train journey rather than just drive or get a conventional train.

My personal view is that self driving vehicles will kill the argument for public transport outside of areas of significant population at peak times within the next 20 years. Once you take a significant amount of commuter traffic off the rails there will be space for more intercity traffic which with improved signalling and fewer stops would be nearly as quick as high speed rail.

Edited by Talksteer on Saturday 31st December 15:06

[frosted]

Isnt that train a cheap copy they stole of the germans?

[jbi]

frosted said:

Isnt that train a cheap copy they stole of the germans?

no the earlier trains are copys... this is something new

[Graebob]

Talksteer said:

Interesting things

An informative response, thanks

[Sifly]

Good to see it comes 'internet ready', but the seats don't look too comfortable?!!

[yellowyellow]

Sifly said:

Good to see it comes 'internet ready', but the seats don't look too comfortable?!!

I see Bill and Ted popped by to say ''excellent train dudes''.

[uk_vette]

China starts worlds longest high speed train.
The world's longest high-speed rail route linking Beijing and Guangzhou started operation on Wednesday.

Running at an average speed of 300 kilometers per hour, the 2,298-kilometer new route will cut the travel time between Beijing and Guangzhou from more than 20 hours to around eight.

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vette

[mph1977]

Apache said:

Not too far from the truth. When Ariva took the Cross Country route over from Virgin it isolated the tilt systems on the Super Voyagers as they felt it more important to improve reliability than knock a couple of minutes off the journey time

Edited by Apache on Sunday 25th December 11:36

primarily because there is minimal tilt cleared track mileage on the current XC routes ... particularly the NE/SW routes where the voyagers are mainly used

[Apache]

mph1977 said:

Apache said:

Not too far from the truth. When Ariva took the Cross Country route over from Virgin it isolated the tilt systems on the Super Voyagers as they felt it more important to improve reliability than knock a couple of minutes off the journey time

Edited by Apache on Sunday 25th December 11:36

primarily because there is minimal tilt cleared track mileage on the current XC routes ... particularly the NE/SW routes where the voyagers are mainly used

As I recall the routes were in process of being upgraded as time went on, I worked in the same office as the code writers