China sets sights on rail speed .

[china]

​

[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Nation sets sights on rail record[/FONT]
By Xin Dingding (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-01 09:48

The bullet train with highest speed of 350 kph runs along the Beijing-Tianjin intercity passenger railway on August 1, 2008. China will produce the world's fastest bullet train which will run at 380 kph for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway.[Xinhua]​

China will produce the world's fastest bullet train for the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, a senior railway official has said.
Zhang Shuguang, deputy chief engineer with the Ministry of Railways, said the domestically developed train will run at 380 kph, the highest speed for any railway in the world.
And if the project materializes, the travel time between the two metropolises will be cut from five to around four hours, enhancing the rail network's competitive edge against airlines, he said.
Previously, China planned to run trains at 350 kph on the 1,318-km Beijing-Shanghai line, the same speed as on the Beijing-Tianjin intercity passenger railway that opened a month ago.
And the travel time is estimated at five hours, about half of the current time. Manufacturing 380-kph trains in China is already possible in terms of technology, he said.
China has established a comprehensive system for bullet train manufacturing, including basic theory, design, manufacture, maintenance and appraisal, he said.
In the past few years, China has imported technology to manufacture 200-250 kph bullet trains from France, Japan and Canada, and German engineering giant Siemens agreed to transfer a full set of technology for manufacturing 350-kph trains.
Using Siemens' technology, Tangshan Railway Vehicles Co Ltd in Hebei province has started production of CRH-3, a jointly designed 350-kph train, and is expected to be able to manufacture 50 such trains by next year.
China has also fostered an experienced team through the previous six speed-up campaigns and the building of the nation's first high-speed railway between Beijing and Tianjin, he said.
"We have mastered core technologies in terms of manufacturing high-speed trains and made innovative achievements in the process," he said.
"It is possible that we can start to manufacture 380-kph trains in two years' time, and put them into service on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway," he said.
Construction of the railway is progressing smoothly, according to He Huawu, the ministry's chief engineer.
It is likely that the high-speed line can be finished within four years, and become operational in 2012, one year ahead of schedule.

 

[Nuggler]

:lol:...Wait'll one a them buggers jumps the rails. Another "great leap forward".

It's be like a Chinese fire drill..........sort of.

Wish I could be there...................................NOT

 

[eh1eh]

LOL. Happened. Germany. http://www.railfaneurope.net/ice/eschede.html

 

[china]

Nugller

...Wait'll one a them buggers jumps the rails. Another "great leap forward".

It's be like a Chinese fire drill..........sort of.

Wish I could be there...................................NOT

The train which operates between Pu Dong (Shanghai) and the Pu Dong airport travels at over 420 km / h .I covers the distance of 30 # km in less then 7m .
The train has bin doing its thing for over (at least ) 6 years and all is fine Nugller .

 

[hermanntrude]

[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]...[/FONT]the domestically developed train will run at 380 kph, the highest speed for any railway in the world....

Nugller



The train which operates between Pu Dong (Shanghai) and the Pu Dong airport travels at over 420 km / h .I covers the distance of 30 # km in less then 7m .
The train has bin doing its thing for over (at least ) 6 years and all is fine Nugller .

these two statements are mutually exclusive. who is wrong? i wonder

 

[darkbeaver]

Well to find out one would have to expend a little effort and search I suppose but I'm so lethargic this evening that I'm not sure I care about the outcome.

 

[china]

Quoting china
[FONT=Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]...[/FONT]the domestically developed train will run at 380 kph, the highest speed for any railway in the world....

Quoting china Nugller



The train which operates between Pu Dong (Shanghai) and the Pu Dong airport travels at over 420 km / h .I covers the distance of 30 # km in less then 7m .
The train has bin doing its thing for over (at least ) 6 years and all is fine Nugller .
​

these two statements are mutually exclusive. who is wrong? i wonder

There is nobody wrong The fact is that China has very fast trains ;.....

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Believe me. This article is the most in depth one on the topic of Maglev of Shanghai Pudong Airport. I have talked about Maglev before in these two articles: Maglev Operates in Shanghai and Ticket for Maglev Tour. Here are the Maglev pictures I always planned to take.
Below: Before I see the real Maglev train on the rail, the large advertisement of Maglev on the way out of PVG (Pudong Airport) has attracted my attention. SIEMENS is famous in China but the name of ThyssenKrupp was heard only when Maglev is mentioned. I believe most passengers will see this Maglev advertisement when they just get into a cab or his car and drive out of PVG.

Maglev Advertisement © Jian Shuo Wang
Maglev Leaving Station
I walked across a long way from the Departure Hall of PVG to the rail road of the Maglev line. Below is the entrance of the station for the Maglev trains. The two guard asked me to stay away from the rail road politely. They said there will be no train today. Obviously, they were lying just to keep me away from the Maglev rail.

Gate of the Maglev Station. © Jian Shuo Wang
Just before I turned and started to go away, a Maglev train started from the station and headed to downtown Shanghai. I quickly pointed the camera and took the picture below (My first Maglev picture). The head of the train just got out of the station.

Maglev Train with Head Just Out of Station. © Jian Shuo Wang
Below is a series of pictures showing the Maglev train moving away.

Maglev head out of Station. Photo 2. © Jian Shuo Wang

© Jian Shuo Wang

© Jian Shuo Wang
The startup speed of Maglev is not very fast, but it just disappeared before I can see the train clearly.

Maglev left station - far away from where I stayed. © Jian Shuo Wang

Maglev almost out of sight. © Jian Shuo Wang
Maglev On Railway
Later, I found the train would pass the station and reach the other side of the station, stay there for about 2 minutes and then move back into the station, take the passenger and go for the downtown direction. So I have plenty of time to take more pictures for this most advanced train in the world. You can see the Maglev train is parking near the tower of the airport.

Maglev and the control tower of the Pudong Airport. © Jian Shuo Wang
The same picture with horizontal view.

Maglev and the control tower of the Pudong Airport - horizontal version © Jian Shuo Wang
The above two Maglev pictures were quoted in some books and TV commercials (in Japan).
From the picture below, you can clearly see the head of the train and the "Shanghai Transrapid" mark on the Maglev train.

Maglev with Shanghai transrapid on the train. © Jian Shuo Wang
This is the cart for the train. It seems the seat in it is very comfortable. I didn't get into the cart yet since the ticket price for the tour (before it officially operate) is just too high. (Update: The price was cut twice and now it is 40 RMB for single trip if you hold the ticket of the flight of the same day. Aug-2007)

© Jian Shuo Wang
Infrastructure
The over head bridge connecting Pudong Airport and the Maglev station.

© Jian Shuo Wang
Below: This is the end the Maglev's railway. The huge installation and testing cart was parked on the right railway.

© Jian Shuo Wang
Below: More details about the huge machine.

© Jian Shuo Wang
Looking from the other side of the railway. A big german guy was working on the electronic equipment near the train, but I forgot to take a picture for him.

© Jian Shuo Wang
The lovely tree before the Maglev station.

 

[china]

Is it a Bird? A Plane?

Nope, only Shanghai's flashy new Maglev, the world's fastest train. Way ahead of its time seven decades ago, the still-futuristic magnetic levitation system may yet redefine travel everywhere.

By Ron Gluckman/Shanghai,China​

LIKE MANY ON THE MAINLAND, I was on the move over the Chinese New Year. My flight lifted off early on the last morning of the Year of the Horse, touching down at the airport eight minutes later. Yet it never left the ground.

My flight - that's what it was called - was aboard Shanghai's spanking-new Maglev (magnetic levitation) train, the world's fastest, most futuristic passenger line.
Longest-awaited, too, since it's been an astonishing seven decades since the invention of the process that was finally put to a test on the next-to-the-last day of last year, when Premier Zhu Rongji took an inaugural ride with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, which helped fund and build this line. Now, common cadres were having a turn.
Local media called them "joyrides," these series of trial runs to the international airport in Pudong, across the river from Shanghai proper, that add a bit of flash to the Spring Festival. They certainly live up to the billing.
Smiles abound inside the sleek train as, with a breathtaking whoosh, it rockets to 300 kilometers per hour in two minutes flat. Overhead, like a giant scoreboard, an LED blinks out our record-breaking progress till we top 430 kph.
"It's wonderful," says Lu Cong Mei, who came with her husband, sister and several other relatives. Lu plops into a window seat with her shopping bag of thermal underwear from China's famous undergarment maker Three Gun (motto: "Cozy and Elastic) and gleefully watches scenery flash past like in a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon.
"Amazing," she comments afterwards. "I'll tell all my friends to try it." Grandson Dai Wei, 14, adds: "It is fast, really fast. Way faster than I expected. It felt like flying."

Indeed, the Maglev is faster than any speeding locomotive precisely because it's as much like a plane as any railroad we've known.
True, the train has no wings, but no wheels or engine, either. Transrapid, the German firm that developed the system, describes the Maglev as "the first fundamental innovation in the field of railway technology since the invention of the railway."
Magnets are the attraction. First, powerful magnets lift the entire train about 10 millimeters above the special track, called a guideway, since it mainly directs the passage of the train.
Other magnets provide propulsion, and braking, and the speeds - up to 500 kph in test runs; a good 60 percent faster than the renowned Bullet Trains - are attained largely due to the reduction of friction.
Is there a need for such speed? Certainly not on such a short sprint, barely 30 kilometers from the subway in Pudong to the airport.
And not at the cost, note critics. The Pudong line, which should go into operation by the end of this year, is unlikely to ever recoup its $1.2 billion investment.
A high-speed link between Beijing and Shanghai, among several additional Chinese lines under consideration, might cost $22-30 billion, or nearly as much as China intends to invest in all rail infrastructure nationwide in its current five-year plan.
Still, critics miss the point. And the thrill. The Maglev isn't about getting from point A to B in Pudong. Rather, it's the ride, a glorious glide, from the past to the future.
And where this new train might take us, not simply San Francisco to Los Angeles, say, in less than two hours, but in a flash, from the mundane motion of nowadays to the hyper-speeds of Tomorrowland.

That's the rush I feel stepping aboard Shanghai's sleekly-contoured train, a feeling of futuristic fervor mixed with nostalgia for all those comics and sci-fi novels from boyhood. There is good reason, since the Maglev's technology is actually rather dated. German inventors patented the basic system way back before World War II.
That's another point of critics. In the ensuing seven decades, magnetic levitation trains haven't moved much closer to reality.
A test track in northern German was built nearly 20 years ago, but even the Germans have shied away from launching a commercial magnetic levitation line because of the cost.
"The huge investment just doesn't make sense in a country like Germany, with a well-developed rail system," concedes Dr. Wolfgang Rohr, German Consul General in Shanghai.
"But for countries like China - or the United States or Australia - they could jump to this new technology which has huge potential." He points out that the Maglev is pollution-free, with no exhaust.
Later, I join a group of excited old-timers in the countryside, midway to the airport. We watch the Maglev blaze silently past. That's another advantage; hardly any noise.

"In Germany, we've been having endless discussions about this," notes Eckhard Schneider, a German tourist riding the Shanghai Maglev over the holidays. "Here, in China, they just do it!"
Adds companion Ulli Schonart: "They built this all in less than two years. Amazing! In two years in Germany, we'd just have a plan for the evacuation of the birds along the way."
Long hopelessly ahead-of-its time, the Maglev could finally come-a-time. Germany may soon commit to its own line, possibly from Dortmund to Düsseldorf in time for the 2006 World Cup, or a Munich airport express.
Meanwhile, in the United States, a $1 billion-funded US pilot project has settled on two finalists: a 47-mile Pittsburgh system and a 40-mile track linking Baltimore and Washington, DC.
On the other side of the country, Maglev-backers are lobbying congress to fund a 92-mile circuit between three Southern California airports that could be expanded to a 273-mile web designed to relieve the region's gridlock.
The US proposals would all utilize independently-patented American Maglev technology.
All that is a big if, though. For now, Shanghai is the first out of the tracks, and early-riders give the train-plane two thumbs-up . "I'm proud that Shanghai has this when nowhere else in the world does," says Lu, as we glide almost soundlessly to our arrival at the new Pudong international airport.
On a journey of firsts, here's another. Lu has never seen the airport. Which isn't that surprising, considering she, like the others in her family, and most in China, for that matter, have never taken a flight.
Until now.
Ron Gluckman is an American reporter who has been roaming around Asia since 1991, when he was based in Hong Kong. Since 2000, he has been based in Beijing, covering China for a wide variety of publications including the Asian Wall Street Journal, which ran this in the Weekend Edition of February 21-23, 2003.
Despite much ballyhooed plans for new maglev lines between Beijing and Shanghai, as well as the shorter run from Shanghai to Hangzhou, China reiterated its plans for high-speed rail, but with the surprise announcement in spring 2006, that it has successfully tested and planned to proceed with its own style of Maglev. Check back for more news on the progress.

____________________________________________________________________________________


The price for a one way ticket (in 2005, last time I took the train to the airport )was less than 20rnb that is 3.13435 CAD

 

[hermanntrude]

The reason i said someone had to be wrong is that both you and the article claim that a different train is the fastest one. There can only be one fastest, therefore one of you is wrong.

I think I can see, now, why there is an apparent contradiction, though.... The article stipulates it is the fastest train on RAILS. The maglev doesn't really have rails and could almost be said to be not a train but more like a hovercraft or a plane.

 

[Avro]

Good for China, something I know that is lacking in southern Ontario, is any sort of semi-decent public transit. If you go to Europe, Japan or in some cities in the U.S. they run circles around us when it comes to getting people around fast and cheap.

Thank Mike Harris for that one.:roll:

 

[china]

Avro

If you go to Europe, Japan or in some cities in the U.S. they run circles around us when it comes to getting people around fast and cheap.

If you have bin to China ,Europe ,Japan then you can see that they run circles around more things than just the Canadian transit system .Sad but true .
Well ,perhaps not in the maple syrup industry.

 

[Avro]

Avro
If you have bin to China ,Europe ,Japan then you can see that they run circles around more things than just the Canadian transit system .Sad but true .
Well ,perhaps not in the maple syrup industry.

I have been to Europe and Japan, they are better at public transit but we are all better at human rights and freedoms, oh and we don't run over people with tanks either.

 

[Andem]

I wonder which Canadian (Bombardier) or German (Siemens) rail manufacturer they stole the technology from?

 

[Avro]

I wonder which Canadian (Bombardier) or German (Siemens) rail manufacturer they stole the technology from?

:lol::lol::lol:

 

[Tonington]

Could be both! A hybrid.

 

[Andem]

Could be both! A hybrid.

Germany's high speed rail system (ICE) was developed by both Siemens and Bombardier as a joint venture.

 

[Tonington]

Cool. I didn't know that.

 

[lone wolf]

When, do you suppose, will China nationalize everything? Now they have all this new technology, all the investment and the Tweny-first century industrial base - and the Olympics are over.

Bombardier WAS over there....

 

[lone wolf]

...all the same, a transition from steam traction to maglev is a big move.

 

[china]

When, do you suppose, will China nationalize everything? Now they have all this new technology, all the investment and the Tweny-first century industrial base - and the Olympics are over.

Well , the Chinese work to make heir country great - again .They don't clap their back and say we are the best .