Beijing and Shanghai will only be 2 hours and 30 minutes apart. Of the 1,120 kilometers that separate them, China is counting on the Fuxing “CR450” prototype to reduce times, thanks to a train that would reach, at conventional speed, 400 km/h. Last weekend, railway operator China State Railway Group unveiled the new train model, and presented it as “the fastest commercial high-speed train in the world” from Beijing.
On board, the first images of the train show cabins reserved for business and first class, with comfort as careful as the best airlines. The cockpit is not to be outdone, with a single centrally placed seat and impressive profiling.
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This train, if it reaches the production stage, would be a replacement for the CR400, which today connects the country's cities at speeds around 350 km/h. The CR450 would therefore further reduce travel times by traveling 50 km/h faster, thanks to an architecture 10% lighter than its predecessors, and lower resistance to move the train. On the locomotive side, the CR450 has further lengthened its nose and installed aerodynamic windshields, to further reduce drag. Finally, its braking performance would be 20% better.
At the same time, the Chinese government has said the CR450 train will be operational “as soon as possible”, and talks of production for 2025. It remains to be seen whether work will need to be carried out on the lines to support such speeds.
The media Gizmodo cited the infrastructure consulting firm AECOM, which wanted to point out that by increasing the speed of trains, it was also necessary to increase the distance of railways to make turns, without the train needing to reduce its speed . By gaining 50 km/h, the increase in the angle of each turn would be significant and would correspond to almost an additional kilometer of curve.
Why doesn't the TGV go faster?
For its part, the French TGV set a new speed record in 2007, when it reached, on a test route, the crazy speed of 574.8 km/h, much faster than the previous French record of 380 km/h in 1981. If travelers cannot reach such speed with their SNCF ticket, it is because the railway world comes up against a physical limit that is very difficult to overcome, that of the wave precedes the pantograph on the catenary.
By sticking to the power cable, the device mounted on the train to capture the electricity emits a wave which the train can unfortunately catch up by exceeding a certain speed, which has the consequence of limiting the power supply to the train and causing problems. problem with its ability to accelerate. To achieve its record, the TGV had, in 2007, configured the catenaries so that they were sufficiently taut and resistant to this limiting wave.
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Source :
Gizmodo
