Hi Darnell,

Interesting.
North Of Orleans and about 2-300 metres east of that line are occasional 1km long bridge type concrete structures that appear disused.
They are about 3-5 metres high, and the top is not necessarly level.
I have never been able to find out what they are.
Did you notice them?

The civil engineeering of these high speed lines (Japan, Germany, France, China) is quite a marvel.
My impression (from single level trains not duplex) is that 80% of the line appears to be below natural ground level.
Which sucks from a scenic aspect but makes the line cheaper to build (maybe).

Kimball

North Of Orleans and about 2-300 metres east of that line are occasional 1km long bridge type concrete structures that appear disused.
They are about 3-5 metres high, and the top is not necessarly level.
I have never been able to find out what they are.
Did you notice them?

I did Paris-Strasborg a while back. Couldn't watch the scenery for long because my eyeballs got tired flicking too and fro! My impression was that miles of earth banks had been built up along the line to reduce noise in the surrounding area. Fast yes but I didn't feel that I was travelling in style.

By comparison the train from Nurenberg to Frankurt, was very stylish.

But are not most of the “Chinese” high speed trains units actually built by Siemens of Germany, Alstom of La France (previously of Germany) and Bombardier of Canada ? :

https://www.google.com.a...aw35sO_wh3ORfl3VfzgyAjMS

Hi all,

I make no excuses that I'm a huge bullet train fanboy and it's slightly embarassing how much I adore them.

One thing that I feel often gets unnoticed about these trains is actually travelling on them.

Sure...you hardly ever see any magical scenery from your window on most high speed lines but my goodness....the sheer speed of these machines is something to behold lol

Below is a video I shot around 5 years ago on a French TGV bullet train at speed, travelling from Paris to Bordeaux.

Because I was sitting in the lower deck of this bi-level TGV...the sensation of speed is increased, maybe cause I was more lower to the ground?

Anyways....here ya go:



Yep I share your obsession with them, although I don’t have the room on my layout for a 6 car TGV. I have traveled a lot on TGVs over the years. It’s quite easy these days to do a day trip to Paris or Brussels and Amsterdam on a Eurostar. What I find odd, is why Marklin haven’t done a Z TGV? We would all have room for a full ten car train?

..

A very smooth ride the TGV is although I think maybe the Chinese have the smoothest. Travelled on one in 2015 from Beijing to Shenzhen which stayed almost constantly at 307 km/h lol. Maybe the ballastless track contributes to the damn smooth ride quality?!! Better yet...here is the video I shot of this experience:..

It is worth keeping track of the Abandoned Engineering series on the Yesterday Channel (in the UK) as this line appears in one of those episodes.

CSR had been building high speed trains in a joint venture with Kawasaki (Japan). Since December 2007 when they rolled out the first train, CSR has ended its cooperation with Kawasaki.
Kawasaki then challenged China's high-speed rail project for patent theft, but subsequently backed off.

This was big news at the time.

Kimball