I.A.M. Musing About…

My father sent me this just now. This is incomprehensible. It’s exciting, and suggests that the days of rapid rail travel are not over, as well as making possible environmentally responsible cross-continent travel without using æroplanes!

This is a high speed train built by the Alstom rail group in Belfort , France, which shares manufacturing facilities with the GE Energy Products Europe EPE Gas Turbine group. The video was provided by the GE EPE Chief Engineer in Belfort.

Here’s the video (sorry, I’ve not a good way of embedding it here, so click the link below if you’re not getting anything), with some statistical numbers beneath it for those who can absorb them in meaningful ways. Personally, it’s in the range past “really fast” in my mind.

World’s Fastest Rail Train (current)

The Chunnel Rail Link goes approx. 300 KMH
This train peaks at 574.8 KMH
which is 357.2 MPH
or, if you’re still not really impressed:
Mach 0.482, almost ½ the speed of sound!
…on the ground!
…without a jet engine behind you!
…and it’s a trolley!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 7:00 pm and is filed under BLOG-O-RAMA, NEWS, Personal, TECHNOLOGY. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.