Notes on the TGV

Last March 22, I was lucky enough to take my first trip aboard a bona-fide high-speed train: the Eurostar service from Paris to London by way of the Channel Tunnel. Operating at a cruising speed of about 300 km/h (185 mph), the nonstop journey from the Gare du Nord to Waterloo International Station took 3 hours 32 minutes. The England-side part of the journey was considerably slower than it could have been, owing to the Eurostar's running on Southeastern Railway system trackage, which is not equipped for such extreme speeds. This will all be changing soon, however, when a high-speed rail link is opened under the River Thames to Stratford and London's St. Pancras Stations. Though the tracks will have to curve around the entire city of London to approach St. Pancras from the north, the increased distance will be easily offset by the higher speeds that trains will be able to maintain on approach to London.

Also in TGV news, of course, is the record-shattering 574.8 km/h (357 mph) speed set by Alstom's experimental V150 train, so named because of its intended (and easily surpassed) speed of 150 meters per second. The record was tested on the Paris-Strasbourg section of the TGV East-European network, scheduled to begin serving a vast new network in France, Luxembourg and Germany starting this June. This is the highest speed ever reached by a rail-bound train--only magnetic levitation (maglev) trains, which do not touch the rails but rather hover on a frictionless electromagnetic field, are faster.

Besides the obvious bragging rights involved, Alstom is demonstrating the ease with which it intends to continue dominating the high-speed rail market. As their locomotives get more advanced, Alstom's master plan would see the cost per mile per hour decrease enough to woo new nations into constructing TGV networks. I think what needs to happen first is for a construction company to devise a way of cutting the cost of installing the track, which seems to be the most daunting obstacle facing the United States at the moment with regards to a high-speed rail network. The Acela Express' locomotives, built by Alstom, are capable of much higher speeds than those at which they are currently run, but--like the Eurostar until November--are running on curvy regional railroads most of the way between Boston and Washington. Assuming we get our track straightened out one way or another, the US could easily become Alstom country.