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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: 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.
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(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.