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Fast, Faster and Fastest

I love trains.  I will seek out a train journey in a land I visit just to experience the sound of the local clickety clack and often marvel at the ingenuity and engineering that made that trip possible.

Terrain often plays the most critical part of rail design and therefore of the maximum speed that the train can travel along the route.  The actual locomotive and source of power determines the other crucial component of this arrangement.

Rail gages are the width between two rails and determined by the above two factors and some other criteria. I have had the pleasure of being on a variety of these combinations including what are known as cog rails where the gradient makes it necessary to add a third gear /rail to allow the locomotive to chew into the teeth and gain altitude without slipping.

The fastest trains I have been on are inevitably run on dedicated tracks that are by and large laid on flat terrain with minimal curves along the route.  By designing the entire train assembly as a continuous tube with almost no break in between the coaches, friction loss is reduced adding to the speed.  Below are some of the top speeds achieved on a commercial route between two points that I enjoyed being on...

Brand
From – To
Top Speed (mph) en route
Coastal Pacific (meter gage)
Picton to Christchurch, NZ
50
Deccan Queen (mountain terrain)
Mumbai to Pune, India
65
OBB (mountain terrain)
Munich to Salzburg, Austria
82
Amtrak N.E Regional Express
Washington DC to NY
100
SBB
Lucerne to Zurich
124
Eurostar  (Chunnel)
London to Paris, France
186
ICE
Cologne to Berlin, Germany
188
Freccia Rossa
Milan to Rome, Italy
190
AVE
Madrid to Seville, Spain
193
TGV Lyria
Paris to Bern, Switzerland
200
Shinkansen
Tokyo to Kyoto, Japan
200

Below are some of the pictures on or outside the trains..

An ICE pulls into Cologne Station, Germany  (ICE stands for Inter City Express)

Bullet Train pulls into Shin Kobe, Japan  (Shin means the new - when Japan built a brand new network of high speed trains they were called Shinkansen)

Speed displayed on the Austrian owned train we took to go see Do Re Me land

Renfe is the Spanish national rail system - here an AVE train we rode into Seville is shown

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