On this day 35 years ago, TGV unit 325 set the land speed record at 515.3 km/h on the LGV Atlantique.

This beat the previous record set by the same train on the 5th December 1989 of 482 km/h on the Hannover-Würzburg line

Both these records managed to surpass the record set by an experimental ICE prototype in West Germany in 1988, thus establishing French engineering as superior to the German, at least on speed.

This record stayed current until 2007, when SNCF topped this with a TGV POS setting the new record at 568 and then 574,8 km/h.

TGV 325 is now decommissioned, and is kept at the Cité du Train in Mulhouse.

In honour of this momentous occasion, @darkphoenix and I are currently attempting to beat that speed record on an unmodified ICE 4 on the Hannover-Würzburg line, as we head up to Hannover from Basel SBB today.

Given that the maximum rated speed of this ICE 4 is 250km/h, and we have no access to the driver’s cab, I think our chances of breaking that record are pretty slim.

@moof they managed to get a TGV to 574 km/h? 😱 I thought the little over 500 was still the record.

That would get me to Vienna in 3 hours instead of 13. Technically in 2, but lets account for an hour of acceleration and braking.

@Dany @moof @quixoticgeek They did indeed hit 574 km/h. Problem is, at over 400km/h it's difficult to move around the carriages, and after a high-speed run the overhead cables needed attention (and so did the track ballast). It's only really certified up to 320km/h. Also, at 500+ the emergency stopping distance is over 10km!

@cstross @Dany @moof travelling at the speed of light... By the time you've seen it, you've hit it...

@moof "not bad!"

@cstross @Dany @moof @quixoticgeek And the overhead cables need to be « tensed up » further to prevent the pantograph from catching up with what we call the « mur de la caténaire » in French. Going fast is great, but if you need to repair everything each time a train goes through… meh 😜

Quite happy that the most recent record was held on LGV Est though. My beloved LGV ❤️.

@Poslovitch @cstross @Dany @moof

Does illustrate nicely why so many train lines aren't built any faster than they are. I was amused to see that rail baltica is aiming for. Design speed of 234kph. Why such a weird number? Cos at 235kph it's high-speed, and the engineering regulations on the construction becomes more complicated and expensive.

Still sucks tho trundling along at barely 100kph, knowing that we do know how to make them run so much faster, but capitalism says no. Tho not at 574kph.

@quixoticgeek @Poslovitch @Dany @moof Japan *is* slowly building a long range Maglev Shinkansen, though, which probably will run at over 500 km/h.

@quixoticgeek @cstross @Dany @moof

Speed is great, but better service is what we actually need.

I'm getting fed up with the rural line between the city and my parents'. A train every hour, regular disruptions due to a poorly-maintained crossing, they plan big capacity trains when no-one is aboard (AGC), and poor capacity ones (Z2) when affluence is through the roof.
And the number of times we got dropped off 50 km from the terminus because "we're so late this train can't go any further now".

@Poslovitch @cstross @Dany @moof agreed. It is my belief that every train station, bus stop, metro station, tram station etc... should be served by at least one service in each direction every 15 minutes. Especially for rural locations. The infrastructure should be brought up to the necessary standard to meet this service level.

@quixoticgeek @cstross @Dany @moof

Hopefully, one day we'll reach that... One day. I'm sick of cars everywhere. Public transit is the way! ✊

@Poslovitch @quixoticgeek @Dany @moof Au contraire! What we really need is teleportation booths. Anything short of that is a half-assed half-measure that won't solve the transport problem.

@cstross @quixoticgeek @Dany @moof Call me old-fashioned, maybe, but I'd like to be the same person on the other side of the teleportation booth. Or avoid getting my DNA mixed up with that of a fly that happened to be there at the same time

@cstross @Poslovitch @Dany @moof teleportation will never be viable. Even if we solve the technology. And can be shown in one simple sentence.

"Very funny Scottie, now beam down my clothes"

@cstross @Poslovitch @Dany @moof as a train nerd and engineer I really want this to happen. A 500kph maglev sounds awesome. But what annoys me is the people who use the existence of the maglev test track on Japan, as an excuse to not build any rail, HS or otherwise in the UK as we should be holding out for maglev to be working. A bit like keep burning coal til fusion works...

More rail. More hs rail. And maybe eventually some shiny maglev too. But let's build all of them.

@quixoticgeek @Poslovitch @Dany @moof I still maintain the BIG mistake that crippled HS2 lay in not starting by building out from Aberdeen, south to Edinburgh and Glasgow, and *then* continuing until finally terminating in London. (Which would have sustained the pressure for it to be fully funded and complete, rather than stopping shorter and shorter "to save money".)

@cstross @Poslovitch @Dany @moof total agreement. "The only way HS2 reaches Scotland is if it starts in Scotland"

The moment they sold it to the public as "20 minutes faster to Birmingham" they lost a lot of public support. What sane mind wants to go to Birmingham?. Had they sold it as "do a day trip the Edinburgh fringe" and started building in Scotland. It would be a very different result.

@quixoticgeek @cstross @Poslovitch @Dany Germany is all the better for the limited amount of relatively slow HS rail it has than if it didn’t have any at all.

The problem in the UK is that the speed gains that HS1 gave were basically nullified by the extended length of the track, and most people will never even feel the benefits of those 20-odd minutes on the way to France…

And nobody really talks about the javelins.

@moof @quixoticgeek @Poslovitch @Dany Worse: the UK is the wrong shape! London is down in the south-east and well-connected to Berlin. But a lot of us live nowhere near London! We really need to blobbify Great Britain—move Scotland into the former Doggerland (now under the North Sea), roll Devon and Cornwall up into the English Channel, and as for Wales …

@moof @cstross @Poslovitch @Dany the problem with rail in the UK is a lack of ambition. We're squabbling over HS2. But we should be building hs2-13. Many of which should be avoiding that London. Where's the Penzance to reading HS line? The Crewe to Norwich line? The Dover to Cardiff line? That cross rail loading gauge is not UIC C+ is a travesty. Short sighted. Unambitious.

@quixoticgeek @moof @Poslovitch @Dany I rather think they fucked up by not marketing it as "A British Shinkansen network". Which is exactly what it is, but would explain it FAR better to information-deficient voters.

@cstross @moof @Poslovitch @Dany kinda sorta. The shape really lends itself to a herringbone shape network. Unfortunately we have a star. Couple of years ago I was in Cambridge and wanted to get to Milton Keynes. And the only way was via London. Which is bonkers. HS2 acting as a spine intersecting with lots of other cross ways lines would be great.

@cstross @moof @Poslovitch @Dany that too.