Rail 300

The book I read to research this post was Rail 300 by Murray Hughes which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book was written in 1988 so is a bit dated but quite interesting. It is about the fastest train in the world race and how trains have reached 300 kph. The City of Truro was the first train to reach 100 mph in 1904 and at that time they thought trains wouldn't get any faster. The fastest steam train was of course the Mallard which was restored in 1986. For a long time Britain led the world in high speed trains, there was of course Deltics introduced in 1962. That changed when Japan introduced the Bullet Train in 1964. The cost was so huge they needed help from the IMF to cover the cost. It instantly set a new standard for train travel. They built 5 railway lines initially including the Tokyo - Osaka & Tokyo - Sapporo. This was the first railway to introduce double decker carriages. The TGV in France is even faster  and much of Germany, Switzerland and other places are connected by this service. In Italy Fiat has developed Pendolino trains which are used on the InterCity routes in Britain among other things. In Britain the InterCity 125 is the fastest diesel train in the world. In Spain their high speed train tilts allowing it to go faster around corners. In Australia their high speed train looks just like the APT & is called the XTR. In America the amtrak isn't as fast as some of its rivals.