Four Eurasian Corridors
The full four-corridor Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) network is now being developed which aims to provide a continuous 14,000km rail link between Singapore and Istanbul, Turkey, with possible further connections to Europe and Africa.
TAR routes in operation today cover 80,900km distributed as follows:
Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam), 12,600km
Northeast Asia (China, Korea, Mongolia, North Korea, and the Russian Federation), 32,500km
Central Asia and Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) 13,200km, and
South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Iran, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey) 22,600km.
The biggest challenge apart from providing the missing links is the four different rail gauges across Eurasia. Turkey, Iran, China, and two Koreas, and most of Europe use the 1435mm standard gauge; Finland, Russia, and the former Soviet republics use 1520mm gauge; most of the railways of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka use 1676mm gauge, while most of Southeast Asia operates on metre-gauge tracks.
In the northern corridor, for example, there are breaks of gauge at the Polish-Belarusian border (1435mm to 1520mm), the Kazakhstan-China border (1520mm to 1435mm), and the Mongolian-Chinese border (1520mm to 1435mm). Others include the Iran-Pakistan, India-Myanmar, and Thailand-China borders.
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China to attempt new world speed record
China will attempt to break the world rail speed record currently held by France. The attempt will be made using an experimental train being built by CSR.
The current world record of 574.8km/h was set by the V150 test train on TGV Est on April 4 2007, smashing the previous record of 515.3km/h, which was also achieved in France 17 years earlier. If successful, China will become the first Asian country to hold the title since Japan lost the record to France in 1981.
CNR’s latest high-speed train CRH380B (pictured) has a design speed of 400km/h, an operating speed of 350km/h, and a maximum output of 18.4MW with half the cars powered. The train has improved aerodynamics by enclosing the inter-car bellows with rubber sections and enclosing the bogies more than on CRH3.
CRH380B has a new interior design and four classes: sightseeing, grand, first and second, plus a dining car. Each train seats 1026 passengers.
The first 11 production trains were due to roll out of CNR’s Tangshan plant by the end of 2010. CNR is supplying a fleet of 70 16-car trains.
China’s plan to break the world rail speed record is another step in its strategy to demonstrate that it is now able to make its own technical advances, while China’s two manufacturing giants, CNR and CSR, are ready to unleash their new-found technology and products on the world.
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Faster Than Airplane
A model Maglev train that can travel as fast as a plane has been successfully developed in a laboratory in Southwest Chinese University, but putting the technology to use is still a long way away. The vacuum magnetic suspension train model is able to run at between 600 and 1,200 kph, equal to the speed of a plane.
The new technology is expected to be put into operation within 10 years and promoted across the country in 2030, the Shanghai-based Science Pictorial reported. Passengers will be able to travel from Beijing to Guangzhou in under two hours. A flight from the capital to Guangzhou takes three hours.
The technology, now being researched in just two other countries - the US and Switzerland – theoretically allows trains to run in vacuum tubes at speeds of up to 20,000 kph.
The report cited a number of other advantages: the technology would use just one-tenth of the fuel that a plane does, and emit almost zero noise.
However, the technology only has an experimental significance and is not currently feasible due to its astronomical costs. The cost for one kilometer of vacuum tube would be several times higher than that of a subway, which costs over 200 million yuan ($30 million).
Wang Mengshu, a professor at the Beijing Jiaotong University, was skeptical about the technology. ‘Developing a vacuum Maglev train is a complete scientific fantasy. It is impossible to develop a vacuum Maglev train at a speed of 20,000 kph technically and economically,’ Wang told the Global Times, adding that it was very dangerous for people to take a train in a vacuum state at an average speed of more than 350 kilometers per hour.