Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Deutsche Bahn (DB) and Siemens Mobility have managed to get an ICE test train to 405 km/h (251 mph) on the Erfurt-Leipzig/Halle high-speed line.
While China, with a maglev train hitting 650 km/h (404 mph) in just seven seconds, might regard the achievement as cute, it is a milestone for Germany, where exceeding 300 km/h (186 mph) on the rail network is rare.
The UK had its own attempt at going beyond traditional rail in the 1960s and the early 1970s with the Hovertrain, but the project was cancelled in 1973.
France pushed a steel-wheeled TGV to a record 574.8 km/h (357 mph) in 2007, yet the German achievement will inject a dose of pride into the country's beleaguered network, once an icon of efficiency.
According to a report in the UK's Financial Times, Deutsche Bahn delivers "one of the least reliable services in central Europe," even when compared to the UK's rail system, which is hardly a performance benchmark.
The test ran on a high-speed line that had been in continuous operation for ten years. According to Dr Philipp Nagl, CEO of DB InfraGO AG, no adjustments were needed.
"It is confirmation that infrastructure investments are the foundation for reliable, sustainable, and efficient mobility and logistics over generations," he said.
[...] Thomas Graetz, Vice President High Speed and Intercity Trains, Siemens Mobility, said: "Our goal was to gain in-depth insights into acoustics, aerodynamics, and driving behavior at extreme speeds." Mission accomplished – though what counts as "extreme speeds" seems to vary by country.
Trains on the UK's HS2 railway (whenever it finally opens) are expected to reach speeds of 360 km/h.
An insight into the technology behind Germany's rail network came last year, with an advertisement for an IT professional willing to endure Windows 3.11.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 03, @12:19PM (8 children)
If Google-math is correct, 0 to 400mph in 7 seconds requires 2.6gs sustained, likely 3gs or more peak to avoid jerking people injuriously.
Are the Chinese commuter train passengers also being astronaut trained?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday July 03, @12:50PM (1 child)
An interesting question, which led me to some interesting answers [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 03, @02:27PM
Yeah, it's totally survivable, and as the Spectre agent told James Bond before spinning him up: "Even my Granny can take 3gs" - or something to that effect.
Nonetheless, most vehicle passengers experience significant discomfort when cornering forces exceed 0.4g, and I would imaging a sustained 7 second 2.6g acceleration would take a bit of getting used to, even if you are "eyeballs in" on a nice seat.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Thursday July 03, @02:06PM (2 children)
Just imagine being in a train crash at 400mph.
(Score: 4, Touché) by pkrasimirov on Thursday July 03, @03:19PM
Should be comparable to a plane crash at 400mph, minus the fuel fire.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Freeman on Thursday July 03, @03:38PM
I imagine, if they ran into a mountain or the like. The resulting accordion affect would be detrimental to the occupants of said train.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday July 03, @03:49PM (1 child)
Three interesting points.
First of all, the driver must have balls of steel, the test track is only 1 km and it must be a very impressive site to be going 650 km/h with only 500 or so meters to brake. The fine article claimed they can stop in 220 meters which I suppose is even more terrifying. I would guess this was done by remote control because a human driver would have to be pretty crazy to drive on that track.
The second note is wheel trains have a fundamental acceleration limit set by the coefficient of friction of steel on steel so its very difficult for even an unloaded bare engine to exceed 1/3 of a G, even a quarter G is pushing it. There's sand for emergency braking and emergency starting but its not a long term solution. The maglev, however, can grip the track magnetically and in theory as long as you're willing to pump more watts in, it can accelerate harder.
The third point is WRT humans and G limits they don't bother building transport airplanes to handle more than 3 G or so because fat people passengers will be dead past that point. Sure, Air Force pilots in the peak condition of their lives perfectly fit with plenty of self discipline and drive can momentarily pull quite a few G. Consider if I deadlift my body weight at the gym that's what it would feel like to walk around at 2G; I'd be tired and inconvenienced but I'd be OK, I can lift more than that but generally do not. On the other hand, consider a petite Walmart shopper at 500 pounds being subject to 3 G, their bones and joints would be getting the "1500 pound man" experience, aka they'd be dead. Another way to look at it is Google claims the average human arm weighs 13 pounds, lets call that 15 for easy math, and my regular full dumbbell bicep curl set yesterday morning was 55 pounds in each hand for 8 reps. So, theoretically if I was empty handed I could fly an airplane or type on my laptop or whatever at 55/15 = 3.6 G for at least a couple minutes. But I've been lifting since the very extremely late 80s. I suspect someone less athletic, your typical store shopper at Walmart or even Target, when subjected to 3+ G would just kind of be squooshed and halfway die in the seats. Before anyone makes fun of my 55 pound sets I intentionally don't ego lift I'm in this for the marathon not for the big numbers; I'm well aware that maybe 1% of the population is stronger than me and I'm very comfy with that. I've been doing deadlifts since the 80s without injury, I don't think there's THAT many people stronger than me who can make that claim. Anyway in summary, I could handle a 3G train but thats after 30-ish years of weight lifting all my life and I suspect about 99% of the population could not handle that, despite claims that air force pilots handle 3 and can tolerate 9.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 03, @03:57PM
Whoa early in the morning I hate working late nights to do maint releases over a holiday, sooo sleepy
When I bicep curl a 55 pound dumbbell, its in my 15 pound arm, so the correct equation is (55+15)/15 = I can realistically function pretty well for awhile at 4.6 G not 3.6 G
Noobs at the gym always start at 5 to get the correct form for any exercise, but even the little old ladies seem to do "real sets" holding a 10, so relatively untrained retired women can function up to (10+15)/15 = 1.6 G.
I think a 10 pound on handed bicep lift is plausible for an untrained human; thats about a gallon of liquid, a thin cat, or a baby. So I think the train as operated currently can already incapacitate an average untrained Target store shopper.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Friday July 04, @05:22AM
Maglev trains aren't commuter trains, they're specially constructed pissing-contest winners. They're been around for 1 1/4 centuries without ever getting out of the research stage.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aim on Thursday July 03, @12:47PM
Seriously, who's comparing an unmanned prototype on a test track to a "normal" ICE train on a normal, in-use track? And the title - "without falling to bits" - is that supposed to be humorous?
Even the highly acclaimed TGV record was established with a decidedly non-standard train on a brand-new track, over longer distance.
If german trains don't go to very high speeds, it's because of the federal nature of the country. Their trains need to halt every so often in every city over a certain size, so they don't have time to go to very high speeds before having to slow back down. Whereas in France, it's really only Paris to $FARAWAY, an altogether different proposition.
That being said, even the mere 300km/h of a first-generation orange TGV in routine operation have been impressive.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday July 03, @01:59PM (10 children)
Did the air conditioning work during the record run? (Note: air conditioning on some ICE trains is prone to fail when it's needed most, because it then would operate outside the specified required parameters, and some dumbnuts did not specify "hot weather" as required parameter. I won't wager against the aircon limit also being below 300 km/h.)
That said, they can run, if they're let loose. I was on an ICE about two years ago, and the usual variety of issues accumulated delays approaching one hour. The Bahn's solution to that is to cut off the travel entirely, because it then can be counted as "extraordinary termination" which (probably) counts towards subsidy money, rather than being counted in the dreaded "long distance train over an hour delayed" category which causes disgraceful face loss and (probably) cuts into the manager bonuses. So this train bound for Munich announced it would end at Nuremberg. Which must have gone against the pride of the train driver, who let it run free after the announcement. The speed indicator for the passengers maxed out at 299 km/h, but I could swear this was display-limited, because it steadily kept climbing and suddenly stopped at 299, while the sound and feel of the acceleration went on for a while. Apparently as a result of that run, the premature termination was called off, and the train arrived in Munich with 59 minutes of delay.
I suspect the only sustainable solution might be a serious look to Japan, and having a washizaki ready for everyone over 250k€ pay if less than 95% of trains are within one minute of the schedule after they've been given 4 years to fix it.
ps Google search sum-up AI is completely braindead on the topic with a related search: "shinkansen speed" -> "Die Höchstgeschwindigkeit ist auf 120 km/h begrenzt." ("The maximum speed is limited to 120 km/h.")
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 03, @03:28PM (5 children)
>I could swear this was display-limited, because it steadily kept climbing and suddenly stopped at 299
Most phones these days can install a GPS based speedometer app in a matter of seconds...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday July 03, @03:35PM (1 child)
Years ago, I used to routinely use a GPS app when flying. I could see the speed of the aircraft as it taxied to the runway. I could see the speed increase during the takeoff run, and I could see that we always left the ground at 153 mph -- exactly as the pilot would sometimes announce prior to takeoff.
On one flight I could observe that we were going just a wee bit over 600 mph. I think making up for lost time due to brief takeoff delay.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday July 03, @04:12PM
Tail winds. On a pretty regular basis when GPS was "new and cool" there were infinite reports in the news of transatlantic planes well exceeding 800 MPH. I don't recall ever seeing an article in normie media or in aviation magazines ever reporting over 900 MPH (at least for subsonic passenger planes). Over 800 is not unusual but noteworthy.
Its still flying subsonic relative to the air whooshing east at WAY far over 100 MPH, faster than F1 race car speeds are not unheard of.
Note the speed of sound depends on air pressure so its not terribly relevant that the speed of sound is 767 mph on the ground. If you need a mnemonic for the speed of sound there's a pretty famous aircraft model "767" which coincidentally is the speed of sound in freedom units at standard atmosphere (on the ground and nothing weird). Speed of sound is "like a hundred mph slower" at 35K feet cruising very handwavy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday July 03, @05:28PM (2 children)
I had that as an afterthought, but one doesn't really consider it when thinking about what to do when ending up in Nuremberg at 11, while being expected in Munich at 10.
By the way, on the return journey to Frankfurt, there was a diversion where the Bahn suggested everyone getting stranded in Mannheim. As pleasant. I figured out that the diversion would go through Frankfurt Airport which has local public rail connection, so that leg could be completed with only an hour of delay, too.
I also didn't mention I froze stiff at 4am during winter on the first leg on a train switch, because the bloody ICE already was late. It's that experience that makes me think that a threat of public naked impalement by Romanian experts is the right motivation for the lard asses in management, and the offer for them to save grace from that with the wakizashi already is a really generous concession and only made to infuse a little Japanese (rail) culture.
It's all a matter of organization. I don't mind if the train takes longer because they have to fix the run down infrastructure (as was the case with the Mannheim-Frankfurt connection at that time) or they have important freight trains rolling on shared rail - but they've got to organize their schedule around that and then stick to it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 03, @06:12PM (1 child)
I had quite the adventure getting from Nuremberg to Rotenberg ob der Tauber back in '89. I suspect that's still not a journey to make if you're in a hurry, or even on a schedule.
> I froze stiff at 4am during winter on the first leg on a train switch
Now you're reminding me of the all-nighter I spent in Berlin the following summer because the trains to Potsdam (where my room was) had stopped running - they were nice enough to keep the Metro running all night for the 300k + concert goers such as myself, but after all the bars shut down on Ku'damm it got kinda tedious roaming around the sleeping city, so I finally settled at the platform where my train would leave for Potsdam I think at 6:30am, but I got there more like 5. Anyway, I huddled on the little bench inside the plexiglass wind-screen box and shivered until the train arrived - it was remarkably chilly for a July morning.
> they've got to organize their schedule around that and then stick to it.
What happened to the old joke about Germany is where the trains run on time? Or was that Switzerland? Anyway, I suspect reunification didn't help their punctuality.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday July 03, @06:59PM
In Germany, it's a mess. According to the official report, for April and May 2025, 61.9/62.0% of all long-distance trains arrived within 6 minutes of schedule. Worst recent month was June 2024 with an amazing 52.4%. It's been going downhill since rail privatization and/or reunification. Before, in West Germany, it was pretty much clockwork precision, and I'd guess the East Germans were as good, though with rather vintage vibes.
So that must be Switzerland, their trains run slow but steady. Japan remains the reference. Although I just looked up some samples of information about China, and their rail seems to be very punctual, too, with the fastest high speed trains running at 350 km/h.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday July 03, @04:26PM (3 children)
Amtrak does about 75% within 10 minutes of scheduled time on short runs without even trying on shared tracks, so your proposal seems very pessimistic. Amtraks own metrics claim they're to blame for delays only about 1/5th of the time, so it's very plausible that if Amtrak had dedicated unshared tracks and unshared stations, they could do 95% today without changing absolutely anything except "within 10 minutes" instead of "within 1 minute". I don't think 9 minutes will change all THAT much in the results.
https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel/chapter3/table3-8 [bts.gov]
https://www.bts.gov/content/amtrak-time-performance-trends-and-hours-delay-cause [bts.gov]
People constantly insist the solution to passenger rail in the USA is magic faster trains, but the real solution would seem to be dedicated rail. The easiest way to build "high speed passenger rail" is just to slap down a regular track and ban freight from it LOL. A magic faster train that could run at 200 mph will have to sit there motionless and idling while a 10 mph mega coal train waddles by, just as long as Amtrak's existing 100 mph trains, and you don't have to pay extra for the older simpler 100 mph trains that rarely get to run at 100 mph anyway. The other problems are they don't go anywhere anyone wants to go, and they don't run often enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, @05:36PM
"The food there is horrible, and the portions are so small"
(Score: 3, Informative) by day of the dalek on Friday July 04, @10:17PM (1 child)
The issue is that American railroad lines mostly aren't designed for high speeds. For example, there are a lot of at-grade crossings that would be even more dangerous with high speed trains. There are also issues with things like track quality [wikipedia.org] and curves that are designed for higher speeds. Even in the absence of freight traffic, it just isn't safe for passenger trains to operate at higher speeds on those tracks. Because freight traffic generally doesn't need higher speeds, track owners like UP, BNSF, and CSX don't really benefit much from upgrading their tracks. If something needs to be shipped faster, then air shipping is used instead of ground shipping.
For safety reasons, a lot of main lines are limited to around 60 mph for freight and 79 mph for passenger trains. Or there's the Marceline subdivision in the central US where freight is restricted to 55 mph but passenger traffic (Amtrak's Southwest Chief) is permitted to operate at 90 mph. There are also segments of track with lower speed restrictions for various reasons. The railroads publish these in timetables like this old timetable for BNSF's Chicago division [multimodalways.org].
Railroads certainly can and do prioritize traffic classes. BNSF uses letters to designate different classes of traffic. I don't know what all of them are, but some of them are discussed here [trainorders.com], and I know that Z-trains have the highest priority for freight classes. That means that trains in other classes will be directed to allow Z-trains to pass. Amtrak is supposed to have top priority, but part of the issue is actually enforcing this against railroads when there are freight-related delays. Railroads can and do prioritize certain types of traffic, and trains like BNSF's Z-trains get top priority for freight that's somewhat time-sensitive, whereas a commodity like coal or grain probably has a lower priority and doesn't need to be on a Z-train. A Z-train tends to be relatively short, perhaps around 80 cars, generally has a load of shipping containers, and will often be led by several locomotives (like this train [youtube.com], which is going somewhat slowly here because of the grade it's climbing) if it's going to climb any significant grades. You just don't need that if you're just moving a lot of coal around in open hoppers, for example.
I'm less familiar with other railroads, but I assume that they have similar practices, even if they don't use designations like Z-trains. Sure, freight trains could move aside to allow Amtrak to pass whether the Amtrak's speed is 79 mph, 90 mph, or 150 mph. The issue is that freight railroads don't really have anything to gain from upgrading their tracks to allow for higher speed operation. It probably doesn't benefit BNSF much if their Z-trains can do 100 mph instead of 60 mph, but they have to spend huge amounts of money removing at-grade crossings and installing new rail to make it happen.
Most railroad lines are optimized for freight, which just doesn't benefit much from higher speeds.
Reform the judiciary to stop tyranny [demandjustice.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday July 05, @01:43PM
I don't disagree with any of your post and AFAIK its all factually accurate enough, but I'd have to reiterate the "real" problem is not 60 vs 79 MPH but Amtraks own data shows the reason most of their trains are late is due to going 0 MPH on a siding while a miles long coal train trots past at 10 mph. It doesn't matter if the track can handle 79 or 140 mph or if the train engine can go 100 or 200 mph (in theory) if 20% of the time the train is parked on a siding at 0 mph.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday July 03, @02:43PM (6 children)
Going back to version 3.11 (with novell netware) might be a blessing compared to the atrocity that is windows 11. At least I can find everything in 3.11 and all the things could be manually edited in files instead of the "registry" and the current spiderweb maze of directories.
Still did they expect the train to fall to bits? I would assume they ran it cause they had made calculations and it was safe. Not a test-run-of-destruction.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday July 03, @03:37PM (5 children)
Is it a job requirement to have to install Windows 3.11 from a box of floppy disks with multiple reboots during the entire install procedure?
It sounds less like a job and more like a court ordered punishment.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 03, @03:46PM
I still have a functional USB Floppy Drive and Windows 3.11 Floppy Disks. Works fine in DOSBox. Had fun with some games and even had a look at 'ye olde Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia. Pretty good for what it was. Some of those DOS games are just plain fun. I would certainly play Solitaire in Win 3.1 as opposed to an adpocalypsed version of Solitaire that you're just as likely to find as not on modern computers. That said, Solitaire was just a side thought. 'ye olde Oregon Trail, Civilization II, and Master of Magic are all good games that don't suffer too much from the nostalgia effect.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday July 03, @04:08PM (3 children)
Win 3.11 wasn't that many floppies. Also it was trivial to trim it down content wise to be even less floppies. The thing that was many many floppies was NT 3.51. Not entirely sure but I think it was 40ish floppies or so. Drawing the number from failing memories three decades old or so.
But if you just had your network up you could copy all the floppies to a harddrive and just call it from that. That was even superior to the eventual CDROM versions. That way you didn't have to go by and change floppy. Or if you had to do a floppy install you did it as a day task where you just changed floppy when you passed by the machine.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 07, @05:40PM (2 children)
There was some version of Windows that WAS that many floppies. But memory fails on which one.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday July 07, @06:12PM (1 child)
There probably was. I think it was Windows NT 3 and forwards. I know NT3.51 had a lot of floppies, as noticed I think it was 40ish+.
Windows 3, from memory, wasn't very large and it still required DOS to run in the background. Last good MS-DOS was probably 6.22 or something, I think that was five or six floppies but you only needed one to boot, the others were extras. But you needed a working installation. So if you want to include the DOS disks and then Windows you might have gotten a few more floppies. But it still wasn't anything extreme. But I don't think there was reboots required during the installation of Win3.11, there might have been one in the end to set the changes it had done in autoexec.bat or something such. But this is just recollections from memory and they could be all wrong.
But I don't see why it would have required any reboots as Win3.11 was essentially just a program you ran on top of DOS. But it might require you to set some paths or so manually. So you could exit Windows and start it and exit and start and ...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 08, @02:47PM
It was so long ago. My recollection is similar to yours. There was some Windows 3 or thereabout that had about a dozen disks (or more?). I remember having to duplicate and label them.
I also remember Windows NT 4 which was horrible to install. It was an enormously long process involving many, and I mean many reboots along the way. And that was before you installed some extras (necessary to our project) like MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queue) (as I seem to recall it), and then other things on top of that.
As for Windows 3 on DOS, that is how I would describe it. The computer started DOS. Then you type: "win' to start Windows. You could exit out of Windows and be right back at your DOS prompt. I don't have factual information, but I believe Windows 95 started up the same way but "hid" the fact of starting up on DOS so you get the illusion that it starts up into Windows 95. I could be wrong about the underlying implementation of that, but I always suspected that is what was going on. A modified DOS that basically launched Win 95.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by corey on Thursday July 03, @11:39PM
Here in Australia, where it’s no less than 800km between major cities, 120km/h is considered high speed and is as good as it gets. And despite the Melbourne to Sydney flight route being the busiest in the world (fact check me on that, could be wrong), people say we don’t have the population to support the investment. Govt is certainly happy to spend a hundred billion for some subs which might start to turn up in ten years, as long as we keep throwing cheques at the Americans and Trumps happy with us, and they don’t need subs themselves (which they do), finally when manned noisy nuclear subs are made obsolete by underwater drones. But that’s another topic.