World's fastest train

  For years now, the world's fastest trains, operating in Japan and France, have been stuck at a maximum operating speed of around three hundred kilometers an hour - in fact the latest Japanese bullet trains travel a bit slower than their predecessors, the emphasis of the designers being more on smoothness and economy. Now JR East, the country's largest railway company, has unveiled a much faster train, capable of sustained speeds of around three hundred and sixty kilometers an hour.

The new train, which has been displayed in a dazzling teal colour, looks very similar to the streamlined models already running on Japan's high-speed railways, except for one unusual feature - extra emergency brakes in the form of cat's ears that rise from the roof of the carriages - this, a response to the derailment of a bullet train after an earthquake last year.

The testing will be extensive - the new train won't go into service for six years. Strictly speaking it isn't the world's fastest - that honour goes to magnetically-levitated trains which literally float above the track on an enormous magnetic field - and yes, the fastest of those is also Japanese, an experimental model that has hit speeds of close to six hundred kilometers an hour.

But only one maglev network is in operation today - a German system, built in Shanghai - and it only covers the thirty kilometers from the airport to the city. The technology is so prohibitively expensive that conventional railways are likely to dominate inter-city travel for many more years.

Jonathan Head, BBC News, Tokyo

 

Vocabulary:

stuck at : unable to move or to be moved from

predecessors: here: trains that have been replaced by newer trains

unveiled: showed something to the public for the first time

sustained speeds: speeds that stay more or less the same for long periods

dazzling: impressing a lot with its beauty or colours etc.

derailment: an incident during which a train leaves its track

magnetically-levitated: staying in the air without any physical support, but using the strength of a magnetic field

float: move slowly in the water or in the air

prohibitively: if something is prohibitive, its price or cost is so high that it prevents most people from buying it or doing something; extremely

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