High-Speed Rail - Planned High-Speed Rail by Country, Land Speed Record for Rail Vehicles, Evacuated Tube Transport, Vactrain, Tilt Train (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 24. Chapters: Planned high-speed rail by country, Land speed record for rail vehicles, Evacuated Tube Transport, Vactrain, Tilt Train, String transport, High speed tilting train. Excerpt: High-speed rail (HSR) is a type of passenger rail transport that operates significantly faster than the normal speed of rail traffic. Specific definitions by the European Union include 200 km/h (124 mph) for upgraded track and 250 km/h (155 mph) or faster for new track, whilst in the United States, the U.S. Department of Transportation's reasonably expected to reach sustained speeds of more than 125 mph (201 km/h), although the Federal Railroad Administration uses a definition of above 110 mph (177 km/h). In Japan, Shinkansen lines run at speeds of up to 300 km/h (186 mph) and are built using standard gauge track with no at-grade crossings. China high-speed conventional rail lines currently holds the world's fastest commercial top speed of 350 km/h (217 mph), and the Shanghai Maglev Train holds the world's fastest Maglev commercial top speed of 431 km/h (268 mph). The world record for conventional high-speed rail is held by the V150, a specially configured and heavily modified version of Alstom's TGV which clocked 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph) on a test run. The world speed record for Maglev is held by the Japanese experimental MLX01: 581 km/h (361 mph). While high-speed rail is usually designed for passenger travel, some high-speed systems also carry some kind of freight service. For instance, the French mail service La Poste owns a few special TGV trains for carrying postal freight. For rail speed records, see Land speed record for rail vehicles. The Italian ETR 200 in 1938 was the first high speed service train. It achieved the world mean speed record in 1938, reaching 203 km/h (126 mph) near Milan Shinkansen First High speed train design in 1964, t...