Speeeed!
For your weekend entertainment and edification: Via Atrios (a political blogger, but also evidently a train buff), this very cool clip of the Eurostar high speed train blasting from Paris Gare du Nord to London St. Pancras, 303 miles = ~488 km in 2 hours 3 minutes.
By space standards this is a modest 0.07 km/s - but the visual reference points are a lot closer. High speed rail travel is about the fastest sense of speed you can actually experience. Enjoy!
Update: A link I forgot to add when I posted this, on the prospect that we may get high speed trains here in 'Murrica.
8 comments:
Cool!
Ferrell
Okay I need to go to ride that thing now. Wooosh!
We need one of those in Canada.
Ian_M
Pretty nifty, huh?
And California is just the right size for this technology, ~450 miles from LA to San Francisco.
Even the routine service only takes about 2 hr 23 min now, since they finished the new line. It really is the only way to travel :-)
I meant to add, it doesn't actually feel especially fast when you're on the train because the ride is so smooth. Only when you watch the landscape going by do you realise quite how fast it's moving.
Carla - For all practical purposes it is faster than flying, not to mention far more comfortable than more-packed-than-galley-slaves airline seating. :-) And I've heard how smooth the ride is.
It may even happen here, in due course - I forgot to add a link to my earlier post about that.
Ah, yes, thank you.
The La vie du rail boutique sells DVDs shot from the cab of TGVs plying various lines:
http://www.boutiquedelaviedurail.com/content/boutique/6/84
Myself, I was fortunate enough to ride the cab from Paris to Marseille, back in 1992
Fortunate indeed! What a great ride that must have been!
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