UK rail speed record
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I find it extraordinary that everyone is getting so excited about the Eurostar finally making it to 186mph in the UK today. We’ve waited for it long enough, and it’s been doing that on French tracks for ages. Every news bulletin is talking of it ’smashing’ the previous UK record, without pointing out that the record was so feeble it was an embarassement in itself.
So, putting today’s ‘achievement’ in context and comparing it to other train services around the world… There are many slower services, of course, but here are some of the fastest. It makes today’s achievement look rather mediocre.
If you liked that post, then try these...
European Election results on June 14th, 2004
Motor money on August 8th, 2006
Telco trickery on December 10th, 2002
Political branding on January 28th, 2004
Sars cash on April 30th, 2003
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July 30th, 2003 at 11:10 pm
Yup, that sums it up nicely. There were some beautiful pictures of both the Maglev and the Japanese bullet trains on the Beeb site today.
There’s another thing to consider, too: not only are the French and the Japanese much better than the English when it comes to making their trains run fast, but they also manage to prevent them from crashing much more reliably
d
July 31st, 2003 at 11:47 am
Is it my imagination or have Britain’s train crashes increased in numbers since the privatization of the railways? Makes you question whether some things aren’t best left to the government to run…
August 2nd, 2003 at 8:40 pm
It certainly seems that way. I think this document sums it up nicely.
http://www.publicworld. org/docs/britrail.pdf
The bottom line is that fragmentation resulting from privatisation led to a lack of organisation, and even worse, a lack of incentive — everyone knew that the maintenance work had to be done, but no-one wanted to pay for it.
d
July 19th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
From Beeching to Thatcher UK railways have been sarificed in favour of the CAR. Our trains are old, slow, overcrowded, expensive, accident prone - Thatcher should be brought to account.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
That’s grahpic is unfair. You’ve shown the record speeds for TGV, Bulet and ICE, *not* their normal service speeds, while you’ve shown the service speed of the Eurostar.