The TGV Train

The book I read to research this post was The TGV Handbook 2nd edition by Brian Perrin which is an excellent book which I bought from Amazon. This book was written in 1996 so is a little dated but there is some interesting stuff on the future of TGV trains which I'm going to focus on some of which may have already happened. The engine on a TGV produces 8,800 KW and the top speed varies slightly from model to model but is around 300kph. SNCF the french railway service provider had to slow down the rate at which the high speed infrastructure was built. In Britain where I live in the development stage there is plans to expand the Eurostar to the midlands and north of England. Interestingly there used to be a railway line that went upto the midlands and sheffield which was the european gauge and which was scrapped and sold off when they nationalised the railways and now they are spending billions following a similiar route. There is plans to have a high speed link between Seoul & Pusan in North & South Korea which may have been built by now. The company that built the TGV was set to build the trains for that route. Also there's a high speed train link which has probably been built between Washington DC & Boston via New York which not be quite as fast as the TGV but was supplied by the same company and called the American Flyer. There's a similiar project in Florida linking Orlando or Disneyland with places like Tampa. In Russia there were plans to link St Petersburg with Moscow again with TGV & this would help ease congestion on that route. In Australia there were plans to link Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra. There was also talk of routes in Canada & Taiwan which again may have been built.