China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

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Newcastle Flyer
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China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by Newcastle Flyer »

As of Saturday 26 December 2009, this (Wuhan–Guangzhou High-Speed Railway) is now the world's fastest train service.

Similar distance for Sydney - Melbourne in just under 3 hours. As stated in the full article, only two are non-stop, and average 313 kmh. Wonder what the average speed of the others would be. Is the average speed of the services that are not non-stop the same or possibly lower than those in Europe or Japan?

Part of the article:
The Wuhan–Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, also known as the Wuguang Passenger Railway (simplified Chinese: 武广客运专线; traditional Chinese: 武廣客運專線; pinyin: Wǔguǎng Kèyùn Zhuānxiàn), is a 968-kilometre (601 mi)[1] high-speed rail line, operated by China Railway High-speed (CRH), connecting Wuhan (Hubei) and Guangzhou (Guangdong), in the People's Republic of China. It is the world's fastest train service,[2] using coupled CRH2C and CRH3C trainsets which average 313 kilometres per hour (194 mph) in non-stop commercial service.

The line is part of the future 2100-km long Beijing-Guangzhou High-Speed Railway, while the Beijing-Shijiazhuang and Shijiazhuang-Wuhan sections are still under construction and expected to be opened in 2012.

Reaction from an airline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan%E2%8 ... om_airline
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ALBION1881
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by ALBION1881 »

Between 490 yuan to 780 yuan in our money between $80 to $130 for a ticket I wonder if that each way ain`t bad deal and china building another 42 high speed lines by 2012 with a billion people or more anything possible.
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by kitkat271 »

Newcastle Flyer wrote:Similar distance for Sydney - Melbourne in just under 3 hours. As stated in the full article, only two are non-stop, and average 313 kmh. Wonder what the average speed of the others would be. Is the average speed of the services that are not non-stop the same or possibly lower than those in Europe or Japan?
In China they seem intent on pushing the speeds as high as possible. I had a ride on the Beijing-Tianjin high speed line last month (photos coming) and was amazed they operate the bulk of the 30 minute trip at :shock: :shock: 330km/h :shock: :shock:. An extra stop en route tacked on an extra 4 minutes to the journey. I'm sure the average speeds would be faster than Europe, and comparable to all but the express services in Japan.

Also I don't think there are many stops on each service, unlike those all stations Shinkansens in Japan ...
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by Newcastle Flyer »

kitkat271 wrote:An extra stop en route tacked on an extra 4 minutes to the journey. I'm sure the average speeds would be faster than Europe, and comparable to all but the express services in Japan.
Steve Lieberman (spell ?) did mention earlier that the average speed is said to be about 243 kmh.

It was said that a Sydney - Melbourne very fast train would take about 4 hours or so, making it more or less uncompetitive against air. The distance for the above line is almost the same for the current Sydney - Melbourne route, and the WGHSL shows it can be done in about 3 hours.

Edit: This related Wiki article says that China has increased speeds on many of its railways - if it was here. . .
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by Volvo Super Olympian »

China is currently building 4 horizontal and 4 vertical high speed rail link across the entire country. That's why every big railway manufacturer, namely Kawasaki, Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens, are all fighting hard to secure the rollingstock orders, because these high speed train order by Ministry of Railway, will be the biggest in the world.

So far the pending orders are for 350km/h capable Kawasaki (140 sets CRH2), Siemens (100 sets CRH3), Bombardier (80 sets CRH1).

Also, an additional order for 250km/h CRH5, Alstom (30 sets) has been secured a few months ago.

This WuGuang HS Rail is the first section of one of the four vertical HS links, eventually this will link all the way up north to Beijing in 2012 and will become a 2360km long HS Rail.

It will eventually link up south to Hong Kong as well, but this is still yet to be finalised and commence construction. Word is that this won't be available until 2014 at least, due to the entire stretch in HK being a 23 km tunnel!
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by Swift »

See what a dictatorship can achieve?
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by catlovecat »

ALBION1881 wrote:Between 490 yuan to 780 yuan in our money between $80 to $130 for a ticket I wonder if that each way ain`t bad deal and china building another 42 high speed lines by 2012 with a billion people or more anything possible.
Remember, the commodity prices in China is much cheaper than here.
490 yuan is equal to 2 weeks wages for an average Chinese worker, and a return journey back home would cost them at least a month of salary.

That's why Chinese keep saying that the high speed rail is "a railway for the rich". And because quite a few "low speed" trains were canceled to make room for the high speed rail, the pax say they are "forced to high speed".
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by catlovecat »

Deanes 5013 wrote:See what a dictatorship can achieve?
They did achieve something.

The HK$67 billion HK-Shenzhen section of the high speed railway was approved, with the support from pro-beijing legislators (quite a few of them are elected by a small circle of pro-beijing firms, not by popular vote...HK is not a fully democratic region)
At $2.6b/km, this is the most expensive railway ever built in terms of cost/km (more than 10x of average cost of high speed rail around the world).

Just after the legislating council approved the high speed rail budget, around 1700 protesters encircled the building, trapping the pro-beijing legislators in the building for 6 hours.

More details: The Siege of Legco
http://daisann.com/2010/01/17/siege-of-legco.aspx
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by dude »

By comparision, the Tokyo-Hakata Nozomi's complete that run in about 5 hours - a distance of about 1000KM's.
Stops are usually Shin-Yokohama-Nagoya-Kyoto-Shin Osaka-Okayama-Fukuyama-Hiroshima-Shin Yamaguchi-Kokura.
So the Chinese and the Japanese are doing pretty much as well as each other, the only thing to remember this route opened in 1975.
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Re: China: Worlds newest fastest railway opened

Post by lunchbox »

Wuhan Metro and hi-speed have partially re-opened after the coronavirus shut-down.
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