The theme for our travel pics this week is Public Transport.
I might have mentioned in the past that I’m something of a nerdygeek when it comes to high-speed trains 🙂
So far, we’ve traveled on the high-speed
* Trenitalia Freccia train from Rome to Paris (300km/hr – but it was an overnight train – so there wasn’t much to see … Doh!),
* NTV Italo from Venice to Rome (300km/hr – I HIGHLY recommend this – it was an amazing experience)
*Eurostar (300km/hr in France, 230km/h in Britain, 160km/hr in the Channel Tunnel – again, not a lot to see.)
But they are all traditional trains – ie they have wheels which run on tracks.
The Shanghai Maglev is different – it uses magnets to glide along a magnetised track – so it literally hovers above the track.
It reaches up to 430km/hr on it’s 30 km journey between Pudong Station and the Shanghai Airport – but only for two hours a day.The rest of the time, it runs at 300km/hr, to conserve power.
But even at it’s ‘lower’ speed, it’s an amazing sensation … because there are no ‘moving parts’ connecting the train with the ground!
Cairns Communications 