At 357mph, it was impossible to focus on anything within a mile of the train. Even distant hilltop villages flashed past in a second. The sense of flying across the landscape of the Champagne region was accentuated by being on the top deck of the doubledecker TGV train. Engineers had laboured for months to ensure millimetre precision in the track geometry, but we still lurched alarmingly. For one terrifying moment, the traine even seemed to rise from the tracks. We were travelling twice as fast as a passenger jet on the point of take-off, but there were no seatbelts. At that speed, they wouldn't have saved us anyway. As the only British journalist on board, I was determined not to show how frightened I was. The assembled French media, politicians and rail bosses seemed to love every second and showed no trace of fear. But then they have absolute faith in the safety of their high speed lines, with no passenger fatalities in 26 years of operation. I have reported on six crashes which have killed 60 people on Britain's so-called fast lines in just the past decade and none of the trains was going faster than 125mph.
Even distant hilltop villages flashed past in a second. The sense of flying across the landscape of the Champagne region was accentuated by being on the top deck of the doubledecker TGV train.
Engineers had laboured for months to ensure millimetre precision in the track geometry, but we still lurched alarmingly. For one terrifying moment, the traine even seemed to rise from the tracks.
We were travelling twice as fast as a passenger jet on the point of take-off, but there were no seatbelts. At that speed, they wouldn't have saved us anyway.
As the only British journalist on board, I was determined not to show how frightened I was. The assembled French media, politicians and rail bosses seemed to love every second and showed no trace of fear.
But then they have absolute faith in the safety of their high speed lines, with no passenger fatalities in 26 years of operation. I have reported on six crashes which have killed 60 people on Britain's so-called fast lines in just the past decade and none of the trains was going faster than 125mph.
Now let the FT explain why privatising British Rail inevitably produced enormous benefits in quality and customer satisfaction as well as profits for investors... <snark>I think I know why the FT keeps bashing France. It's because everyone else is jealous. The French trains not only run on time without Mussolini in charge, they're faster than everyone else's :-) whereas in the AngloSaxon world we're kneedeep in wannabe Mussolinis and yet still cursed with slow or nonexistent trains...</snark> The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
Part of if is the fact that's it's a real technical achievement (just like you can see enthusiastic crowds, even in the USA, just to watch the A380 fly - because it's quite simply amazing), but also because of the fact that it's a highly complex performance that requires collective work (directly, form hundreds of people, and indirectly, by many more to make it all possible) and that we do all participate to it and make it possible - if only be believing that it's the State's role to get these things going/done. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Congratulations to everyone who made it happen. Genius and hard work go unrecognized FAR too often. Anyone who has ever tried to do something difficult stands in awe of your accomplishments. "Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"
Glory is underestimated, though feeding the poor is not bad either. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
