Railway Performance Society Magazine - Milepost
China - fastest train service in world?
Railway Gazette International (RGI) reports that passenger services have commenced running on the 922km (572miles) high-speed route between the Chinese cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou Bei with scheduled journey times of 2h57 southbound and 2h58 northbound - a timetabled average speed of 312.5km/h (194.1mph) .
RGI further reports claims that the first southbound train covered the journey in 2hr48, setting a start-to-stop average speed of 329.3km/h (204.5mph). The line is designed for 350km/h (217mph) operation, but RGI reports that speeds of up to 380km/h (236mph) are being attained by these trains.
On December 9th, it is claimed that a test train running pre-opening trials achieved 394.2km/h (244.8mph). The Railway Performance Society has not seen any detailed information on these claims and whilst we welcome the news, we cannot verify the accuracy of these claims at this time.
If the reports are accurate, the Chinese have catapulted themselves to first position in the league of fastest train services in the world by some margin. RGI's World Rail Speed Survey conducted in 2007, found the French TGV EST service between Lorraine TGV and Champagne TGV stations to be the world's fastest train service with a start-to-stop average speed of 279.3km/h (173.4mph).
Britain's fastest scheduled train service ranked a lowly ninth in the survey with a less than impressive 173.3km/h (107.6mph) average speed for an East Coast Main Line service between London and York. It was hoped that the new high-speed services between London St Pancras and Kent might improve matters, but the fastest scheduled services - whilst hugely faster than the previous service- still average less than 160km/h (99mph).
The UK is likely to fall further in the rankings due to the openings of high-speed lines in Italy, who were previously in 11th place in the survey. Italy's fastest scheduled train service operated by ETR500 300km/h train sets averages 200.3 km/h (124.4mph) over the 550.95km (342.13miles) between Milan Rogoredo and Rome Tiburtina stations, despite having to run at a lower maximum speed of 250km/h for more than half of the route between Bologna and Rome.
Italy has at least half a dozen other scheduled train services between major cities that exceed a 185km/h average speed.
Link to a video news story below.