Soup of the Day

France sets a new world record as a TGV reaches 574.8 km/h

For the past month there has been the strangest noise coming from the Champagne province of France. For the past five years the sound of heavy machinery has been the status quo for residents along a 500 kilometre corridor from Paris to Strasbourg, but the noise of rushing air and metal on metal has just started to thunder from the new Ligne à Grande Vittesse (High Speed Line) called LGV Est (High Speed Line East). The locals in the area have been warned to expect this from their cousins along the LGV Atlantique corridor from Paris to Tours, where in May 1990 a modified TGV Atlantique unit 325 set a new world record for a manned train (wheel on rail) of 515.3 km/h (320.3 mph).

Fast forward to today and a consortium of SNCF, RFF and Alstom have pushed their own world record even further with a new unit that reached a rocketing 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph). To put this in some perspective, in 2003 a Japanese magnetic-levitation (Mag-Lev) train set a record of 581 km/h (361 mph) which means the specially adapted TGV unit was within a whisker of going faster than even a Mag-Lev train. Many sources have stated that Alstom were confident they could have beaten the Japanese record and we are only left to speculate why they didn’t go for the ultimate prize. But they have broken their own record for manned wheel-on-rail speed and that certainly shouldn’t be ignored.

Unfortunately when the TGV’s that run commercially from Paris to Strasbourg (and beyond) commence commercial service in June, they will be running at 200 mph with the possibility of running at 224 mph in the near future. But the lessons learned today will certainly help SNCF, RFF and Alstom push the limits of the TGV system, which afterall is an exportable commodity. This is perhaps why the consortium allowed the worlds media to broadcast the live pictures of Unit V150 travelling through the French country side at half the speed of sound, a huge advert for all involved. It is prudent to advertise such achievements as Asia is currently growing its highspeed network at a huge rate and Alstom, Siemens and Hitachi are all suppliers of high speed systems competing for contracts.

Unit V150 has been designed especially for this world record by Alstom with SNCF and RFF as part of their commitment to high-speed rail excellence, a project announced in December 2006 that will invest several billion Euros into developing the next generation of high-speed systems for France and their partners, which includes the United Kingdom’s High Speed 1.

So how is Unit V150 different from a standard TGV. Firstly the train has been shortened from a standard eight-car train to three, with two TGV POS Duplex power-units top and tailing the cars. The middle car of the Duplex train has had its standard bogies removed and new powered bogies from Alstom’s Automotrice à grande vitesse (AGV) project inserted to add more tractive force, while simultaneously testing the AGV’s performance at very high speeds. Further modifications to Unit V150 include larger wheels throughout, streamlining of body work, removal of redundent pantographs and a new special livery. The LGV was also modified slightly, RFF supplying 31,000 volts rather than the standard 25,000 volts. All these changes certainly won’t be put into action on any commercial LGV any time soon, but they were needed to allow Unit V150 to reach the target speed.

The wider repercussions of todays events are largely ignored, but highly important. Firstly SNCF has a new 200 km/h safety net between the maximum speed the TGV will travel on the line and the maximum speed it is capable of, which is one of the largest margins in the world. Secondly, the technology used on this TGV is for the most part all new and untested, particularly the AGV components. 360 mph is not too far from commercial airline cruise speeds and thus could seriously start to compete with commerical aircraft, especially when you start to factor in check-in and transfer times associated with flying. Finally, the major competitor to Alstom is Siemens with their InterCity-Express (ICE) system, currently holding no world records. But Siemens also have the Transrapid Mag-Lev system capable of 500km/h, which todays TGV just smashed. This all makes todays events a very enticing advert for Alstom, but it is the second point I wish to focus on.

Europe is rapidly gaining a massive high speed network connecting France, Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom, Holland, Spain and Italy. Since Eurostar started its service in 1996, flights between London and Brussels have fallen over 60% and flights between London and Paris have fallen by 50% with the customers opting to take the train rather than flying. In France it is a similar story with flights between Paris and Brussels being completely suspended and airlines queuing up to partner with SNCF and Thalys. This is all great over relatively short distances, Eurostar’s compete well with airlines in terms of time savings, but flying is still faster overall when the journey distance is more than 500 miles. But now TGV’s are capable of travelling at twice their current speed, times could be cut even further. For example, a flight from London to Edinburgh takes 50 minutes, but add transfers from airport to city centre as well as check-in and the rest of it, you are looking at about two and a half hours. A TGV running from London to Edinburgh at 359 mph would complete the journey in 69 minutes, city centre to city centre.

Completely overshadowed by the triumph of French engineering was the announcement by Network Rail that it will be investing £2 billion in our fledgling network over the next two years to lengthen platforms, provide more seats, build new car parks at stations and to increase speed limits on certain lines. No new lines were announced, other than a project already in progress in Scotland. Rather dissapointing really, especially as the speed increases are mostly pushing all commuter lines to at least 100 mph and possibly increasing the East and West Coast Mainlines to 140 mph where track formations allow. 140 mph is a long way off 200 mph, but I guess it’s a modest start.

Network Rail proudly announced that the investment they announced today would be seen and felt by all rail passengers in the next two years. John Snow from Channel 4 News pushed John Armitt, Chief Executive of Network, to tell us why high speed was not in our interest. John Armitt explained that the French needed their TGV’s because their country is three times the length of the UK and that TGV’s were predominently used by lesuire travellers rather than business. He went on to say that the French have created a two tier rail system with vast investment going into the TGV network and little going into the old network (lignes classique).

I have to say that I think John Armitt is wrong in his analysis. For starters he should try catching a TGV from Lille to Paris at half-seven in the morning and he’ll clearly see the train is full of business men and women. It is true that during the late 80’s and early 90’s France invested more into TGV than their lignes classique, but this is not the case now with Corail (French intercity services) and TER (regional commuter and shuttle services) receiving massive investment for over ten years now. To be honest, you need to go to France and use their network to see how poor the UK is in comparison. It is very rare that a French train will be late, let alone fail because of ‘leaves on the line’. It seemed very clear that John Armitt was in admiration of SNCF and RFF, but could not been seen to be belittling our very decrepit network.

The interesting but erroneous section in the Channel 4 News programme also touched on High Speed 2, a short section of track just north of Kings Cross / St Pancras in London that would, or should, be the start of a new TGV style high speed line to the North, most likely calling at Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh. Such a line has been talked about for many years now, but with little progress. Recently UK Ultraspeed, a UK group set up to promote the Transrapid System, has been busy pushing for a Mag-Lev line running up the spine of England, but with only £2 billion to play with at the moment, it won’t be going anywhere soon.

The British government seriously has to wake up to the realities of our decaying rail network. Constantly we are told that building a new line wouldn’t be economical and thus wouldn’t benefit us. I think they mean it wouldn’t benefit them as it wouldn’t make any money. But railways don’t make any money, and they’re not supposed to. Railways are for the population to use and all profits (if any) should always be poured back into the system, not given to shareholders. Building a new High Speed line from London to Edinburgh would create a massive amount of capacity for local commuters, freight and of course long distance travellers. A LGV style line running the length of the UK would allow the use of double-decker Duplex TGV’s increasing passenger capacity even further and potentially completely removing the need for internal UK flights, vastly reducing carbon emmissions. There are so many positive points compared to the one glaring negative point of cost, but projects like this should not worry about cost as it is for the citizens of the UK to ultimately decide what they think is worth investing in, not governments!

References

• Our video mash-up of the news, including BBC News at One, BBC News 24, BBC News at Six, More4 News, Sky News, Channel 4 News and Newsnight, http://www.polaris-digital.com/dtv/TGVnewsmashup.m4v
• French Excellence in Very High Speed Rail Web Site (Real Player or Windows Media), http://www.record2007.com/site/index_en.php
• Full live recording of the record attempt (Flash Video), http://a456.g.akamai.net/7/456/34233/v2/sncf1.download.akamai.com/34233/jour_j/post_record/popup_post_record_en.html
• BBC News Online Article and Video, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6521295.stm

If you subscribe to my blog in iTunes, you will receive all the video news items on the TGV world record attempt and Network Rails announcement from the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky News.

Appendix

Unit V150
Operation V150 is the code-name for this record breaking attempt, the 150 refering to the number of metres the TGV will travel in one second.