Blog 68        

According to the news channel today China is home to the world’s fastest train at well over 200 miles per hour. As a commercially run project it is impressive, while at the same time it convinced me to verify the fastest train online.

The good thing about this report is modern railways don’t pollute. In China, stations look like a modern airport and ticket sales surpass airlines. This is how the majority of people travel in China; home to the world’s fastest train at up to 400 kilometers per hour according to the information received. China is spinning a web with high speed railways and intends to extend the track from its current 3,000 to 12 thousand kilometers by 2012 with an estimated price tag of 360 billion dollars. Critics say China is overbuilding.

If that is true, it’s an incredible story that perhaps makes sense. It went on to comment that President Barak Obama is committed to investing 8 billion dollars for improvements to the rail service and to satisfy himself that he is developing a train system to help Americans get to and from work. The original story that I found from last year is worth reading. Click here. I’m not one to criticize others, but it does get me thinking, ‘China to invest another 360 while the United States a meager 8 billion - does that make sense?’

A fast train in France clocked 574.8 k/ph on youtube as the fastest on film in 2007, but then the world’s fasted train recorded in Japan uses a system called maglev, which is magnetic levitation that causes it to rise into the air and float in apparent defiance of gravity. The Japanese got into the Guinness Book of Records testing this train in 2003 for hitting 581 k/ph. In fact over five hundred kilometers per hour is about as fast as a plane.

There are rotating magnets built into the side of the train. There are also rotating magnets on the side of the track. The magnets on the train are aligned, so that they are constantly being pulled towards the magnets that attract them, and pushed away from magnets that repel them. The train does have wheels, but once the train reaches 140 k/ph the wheels are retracted just like the wheels on an airplane after takeoff.  

The train is then suspended in mid air meaning there is no friction to slow it down. The magnetic force is all that is needed to propel it down the railway line at astronomical speeds. So before making statements how about a little research for the records!