20 February 2007

Record with a Bullet


New locomotive speed record

Railway history was written in Germany on September 2, 2006. A series-manufactured Siemens' type-ES64U4 ("Taurus 3") locomotive reached a speed of 357 km/h for the first time ever and thereby established a new world speed record for locomotives. The fastest locomotive up until then had chaulked up 331 km/h.
(Railway Technical Review v.46 no. 4 2006)

Holy crap.

2 comments:

Jeff Skybar said...

Did it use less fuel though?

Anonymous said...

Well its hard to believe that Seimens also makes that piece of crap C-Train! I think its cool that there has been a renewed interest in passenger rail. Although, the costs of safely running trains at near air speed are staggering. I can tell you that the upgrades to track, signalling, grade crossings (not even recomended at those speeds)all add up to mega bucks. We'll see but as much as I like trains I think it's going to be decades before we see high speed rail take off so to speak?