China gets high-speed bullet train

Railways were the first form of mass transportation, and until the development of the motorcar in the early 20th century had an effective monopoly on land transport. Railway companies in Europe and the United States used streamlined trains since 1933 for high speed services with an average speed of up to 130 km/h and top speed of more than 160 km/h. With this service they were able to compete with the upcoming airplanes. World War II stopped these services. In 1957, the Odakyu Electric Railway in Greater Tokyo launched its Romancecar 3000 SSE. This set a world record for narrow gauge trains at 145 km/h, giving Japanese designers confidence they could safely build even faster trains at standard gauge. Desperate for transport solutions due to overloaded trains between Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, the idea of high speed rail was born. The world's first "high-speed train" was Japan's Tōkaidō Shinkansen, officially opened in October 1964, with construction commencing in 1959. The 0 Series Shinkansen, built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, achieved speeds of 200 km/h (125 mph) on the Tokyo–Nagoya–Kyoto–Osaka route.

BEIJING: China's first domestically developed high-speed bullet train, capable of reaching 300 kilometres per hour, rolled off the production line on Saturday.

"China has joined an elite world club after Japan, France and Germany, to become the fourth country capable of turning out such high speed trains," told Wang Yongping, ministry of railways spokesman.

The streamlined train body, made of aluminium alloy, is the lightest of its kind in the world, Wang said. The eight-carriage train can seat about 600 passengers and will start running the 115-kilometre-long Beijing-Tianjin route before the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, the report said.

It will cut travel time between the two cities to about 30 minutes from the current 80 minutes. The manufacturer, Sifang Locomotive and Rolling Stock Co Ltd, said the first batch of 10 such trains, with a speed equivalent to the Japanese bullet train, will be delivered in the first half of 2008.

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