travel_kielbas

i just saw a blurb on one of those news tickers that said that a meglav train between paris and rome would take just 90 mins. Are there any in existence currently? I googled, but looks like i can only find an example of one in asia...

thanks in advance!

StCirq

Even if there were a MAGLEV train between Paris and Rome, which there isn't, it wouldn't go faster than 310 mph in all likelihood, and that would be more than two hours.

ira

Hi TK,

It is about 840 mi (1400 km) from Paris to Rome.

Estimating that the train would need about 15 min to exit Paris and another 15 min to enter Rome, that means it will travel about 800 mi in 1 hr.

The sonic boom would be very interesting.

tower

when trains first were introduced into this country (USA..late 1820's), some detractors were warning that if they exceeded 20mph, blood would spurt from the passenger's nostrils, everyone would become violently ill, and brains would be so impacted as to induce irreparable mental harm.

And now the Maglev (Shanghai)!

Stu T.

Dukey

My understanding is that the one in China is designed to have a top speed of about 430 Km/hour.

rkkwan

While Germany and Japan has tested maglevs for decades, the Shanghai maglev (German technology) is the only one in commercial service.

The maximum operation speed is indeed about 430km/h or 268MPH.

rkkwan

BTW, Japanese have tested maglev trains at up to 581km/h (360MPH), while earlier this year, French has set the highest speed on rails with their TGV at 575km/h (357MPH).

flanneruk

Calling the empty train that goes from a Shanghai airport to nowhere anyone wants to go a "commercial operation" is an interesting use of language. In nearly a quarter of a century of failed Maglevs, there has yet to be a single one that even tried to run commercially.

The Shanghai airport toy train is the only Maglev that's ever taken paying passengers for more than a month or so - though it'd be hard to find any. It's currently the only operating Maglev, though there's no shortage of other cities around the world trying to throw their citizens' money away.

Shanghai's was built at the instigation of the city's Party secretary - recently spectacularly fired for massive corruption.

Since he's been got rid of, Shanghai's abandoned the plan to build another toy for techno geeks, the planned Maglev to Hangzhou. Even in an unaccountable dictatorship, there's a limit to how much public money can be wasted on pointless projects designed merely to make the rulers look purposive and dynamic.

Ever since the first public Maglev ran in 1984 (peer round Birmingham airport railway station and you can still see bits of it, abandoned in 1995 because it kept breaking down), use of the word is an infallible guide to who's trying to get their snouts into a trough of government money they can mis-spend.

kerouac

Currently the highest commercial train speed in France is 320 km/h on the TGV-Est. However, they are planning to raise it to 340 km/h by next year if no problems develop on the line.