Okay, it's not exactly about aviation, but it is about an alternative, at least in France. Enjoy this cab-ride video shot aboard a TGV going from Toulouse to Bordeaux to Paris. The first half of the trip is shot on ordinary rail between Toulouse and Bordeaux, where the train has to share the tracks with ordinarly trains and is limited to 160 kph (100 mph) and makes a few stops. But advance the video to 2:05:00 and watch as the train enters TGV-only rail and accelerates to 320 kph, which is a cool 199 mph! For mile after mile, the train cruises at about 317 kph with the scenery whipping by. It's quite exhilarating, and one wishes we could do that in North America.
Done that! Also done that betw Shanghai & Hangzhou! Dizzy-making to look outside the car nearby......must keep focus on horizon. Going through some stations/small villages was almost frightening....Happy to be mid-train rather than front......thinking about those crossings in the middle of nowhere....... I remember +/- 318 on the Shanghai in-car display...also recall the display fluctuating by +/-20 kph at various points as the track curved; didn't feel that in-car tho
Some people think that the Chinese high-speed rail is unsafe when compared to European and Japanese trains. Did you see anything that might make that valid? And when you say "crossings in the middle of nowhere", are you referring to grade crossings in the high-speed zone? That would be unthinkable in Europe - the only grade-crossings on this video are on the lower-speed sections of the trip - and it would be hard for me to believe that China would be any different.
You're probably right about the grade level vehicle crossings.....I was mostly remarking about passing through the stations & villages, some of which were right ON the line. Was waiting for feathers and/or parts flying past.....The train had previously set a record of 422 kph.....don't recall we ever got close to that......
Here's one more TGV cab ride, this time between Montpellier and Lyon. The fast stuff begins around 50:00. This engineer doesn't push the 300 kph limit and prefers to cruise at 282-288, which is still pretty fast (175-178 mph). Even at that speed, the French countryside looks beautiful. Note the inset in the lower right showing an aerial view of the train's route, and the route "map" above it.
I saw another cab-ride video of a Thalys train traveling at about 175 mph between Rotterdam and Antwerp in which a bird hit the top of the windscreen with a loud "thump". No visual evidence afterwards, but I suspect the bird had breathed its last.
Streamlined vehicles' boundary layer seems to suck in birds, so I am sure that is pretty common. Common in fighters, too, I had about a dozen bird strike incidents flying low level in Europe.
Talking of China, the link from Shanghai airport to the city can be done with the Transrapid Maglev (really low level flying!) and it runs about 270 mph when in fast mode. I’ve used it a couple of time and it’s pretty impressive. It was built by Siemens. London to Europe on the Eurostar trains use TGV technology through the channel tunnel, although the tunnel section is run quite slowly probably due to comfort and traffic.
The Thalys trains that run from Paris through the Netherlands and Belgium to Germany also use TGV technology, though in some cases the cities are so close together that the time spent in the high-speed regime is fairly short. I saw one video where the amount of true high-speed travel between Amsterdam and Rotterdam is less than 10 minutes! What was interesting was that the train kept switching between DC and AC power, and the locomotives had two separate pantographs accordingly. The train actually coasted, without power, while the switch was being made; I presume the train had an auxiliary generator to keep the power on inside the cars.
Here's a shorter video, an early morning trip from Calais to Lille. While no speed info is shown on the screen, it is apparent once the acceleration starts at 13:30, that within about 3 minutes the train is doing close to 300 kph, and the videographer confirms that at one point by taking the camera off the window sill and showing that the speedometer is reading 295! And the train stays at that speed for most of the video.
Our last two trips on Amtrak were " wonderful" . We went from Edmonds to PDX and return. First trip was like sitting between two machine guns. Forward truck had flat spotted wheels, aft set had flat spotted wheels. On our return from PDX , same thing. Several months later we took the same trip. Same thing, flat spotted wheels, top speed was maybe 70 mph. I walked the entire train from the front to rear coach and EVERY car had trucks with flat spotted wheels. Again, like riding over a bunch of machine guns. And this is the richest country in the world ??? The only good thing about AMTRAK is the comfortable seats and the ability to get up and walk around and listen to the flat spotted wheels.
When I ride the MARTA subway to the Atlanta airport, I often hear flat-spotted wheels! I guess American rail networks don't care, if it's not a safety issue. I would guess that the high-speed Acela trains in the northeast don't have that problem.
I wasn't going to post any more videos, but this one has me puzzled. Once the train gets up to top speed, which begins at 17:00, you hear a noticeable gurgling noise that just doesn't make sense. Can anyone else figure out what that might be? The French are obviously amenable to people shooting cab-ride videos, but the Japanese must not be, since I cannot find a single such video shot aboard a Shinkansen.
