Talk:List of high-speed trains

What is an operating speed?
Chinese trains are operating on higher speeds then French ones. That include both scheduled routes and test runs. But in the table "operating speed" are much higher for Europeans trains... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.88.132.165 (talk) 12:02, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Since august 2011, by a decision of Minister of Raiway Sheng Guangzu, all Chinese trains are limited to 300 km/h for economic and security reasons (after Wenzhou accident). It's why the designed speed is 350 km/h or more for CRH, but operated speed is 300 km/h or less.
 * As you have seen, the actual fastest trains in the world are the french TGV family and the german ICE 3, on the French high speed lines.
 * (Source : http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-08/11/c_131043781.htm)
 * --FlyAkwa (talk) 22:37, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Above is not true. I have personally been on the mentioned Chinese trains last year and checked with GPS, they still travel at 350KMH actual speed. --Normis99 (talk) 10:40, 24 April 2013 (UTC)


 * There is carelessness in China, with a general tolerance of 10 km/h in maximum speed; then, officially, HST in China are limited to 300 km/h, but often car reach 310 km/h (but never 350 km/h).
 * Your GPS measure was made before august 2011, or was wrong, or the train was largely over-speed. --FlyAkwa (talk) 00:14, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Flags
I think the use of flags in the table facilitate the readability and understanding of who use or build trains. I agree that the "manufacturer" column is not perfect, with, maybe, a little attempt of "nationalist pride", by adding, for example, "Altom Italia" after "Alstom". A little work may be to do on this "manufacturer" column (but without deleting flags). For example, it's convenient to see immediately that "rubin" is a Russian manufacturer, or "ABB" is Swiss, without clicking on the link. --FlyAkwa (talk) 11:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Why is it important - other than nationalism - to label Rubin as Russian and ABB as Swiss? It misleads readers too - for instance, according to Railjet, rolling stock is made in Slovenia and Austria, but you've put a German flag on it because Siemens is a "German" business. This kind of mislabelling is inevitable when trying to fit square pegs into round holes - modern businesses span national boundaries. This is an article about trains and businesses, not an article about countries. bobrayner (talk) 14:20, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Unless this information is truly pertinent to the academic/hobbyist train community I don't see it being useful here. Using flags in two different columns is indicative of weak use, if there isn't a single strong purpose for a flag that could have it's own column, then there shouldn't be flags at all. And using them to label businesses isn't just "not perfect" but in this case highly suspect and misleading, there would have to be serious reasoning within the enthusiast community to reinforce the flag use in this tables.Thaddeus Venture (talk) 16:15, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Almost nobody knows (me included) what is RENFE, NTV, CP, Ministry of Railways, etc. Removing the flags will render the page unreadable and absurd.
 * If I can agree with you, its only about the manufacturer column : when I created the new page, the manufacturer column was clean, but some nationalists have added/transformed some manufacturers (Alstom becoming Alstom Italia).
 * --FlyAkwa (talk) 21:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * We have links to RENFE, NTV, CP &c. If people want to learn more about them, they can click the links. That is how en.wikipedia works. The flags still fail WP:MOSFLAG and consensus at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Icons is against you too. bobrayner (talk) 14:25, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no consensus, and I don't agree with you. You don't answers to my arguments. You don't try to discuss, yuou only want to impose your interpretation of WP:MOSFLAG.
 * I wait for consensus here, in this page, with different editors that participate/participated to the page. --FlyAkwa (talk) 17:34, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This is now in WP:IDHT territory. The rules on icons say no, people on the MOS talkpage says no, other editors on this talkpage say no, but you still hit the revert button. bobrayner (talk) 21:47, 1 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and removed the flag icons from the "Manufacturers" column, as that was highly misleading implying that trains were built in countries they were not. I'm not so sure that removing the flags from the "Operators" column would improve clarity, though, so I have left that for now. Maybe a separate "Country" column could be added to improve clarity and enable the flags to be removed? --DAJF (talk) 12:30, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks you for your edit. Flags for operators avoid the use of another column, allowing a smarter, easier, cleaner and better table. --FlyAkwa (talk) 13:35, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
 * This is now in WP:IDHT territory. The rules on icons say no, people on the MOS talkpage says no, other editors say no, but you still hit the revert button... bobrayner (talk) 16:54, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Flags are used everywhere in Wikipedia to shortly illustrate nationality of company/agency (such as "list of space probes", etc). In this page, it's both useful and smart to use flags to identify nationality of companies. I will continue to revert your irrelevant edits. Additionally, the flags of manufacturers would also be put back on the page. --FlyAkwa (talk) 14:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If you're promising to edit-war rather than comply with guidelines and comply with consensus, that will just discredit you further. bobrayner (talk) 00:06, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If you persist in your irrelevant edit, you will have "an3-notice" and "uw-3RR" soon. At a pinch, organize a vote, with at least 20 voters (to avoid your friends) about these flags, before any new edit. I keep an eye on this page. --FlyAkwa (talk) 10:54, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Without getting into the discussion on whether or not to use flags, I would question the number of flags used. For example, the cell for BR Class 43 (Intercity 125) has six (identical) flags as all six operators are in the UK. Surely one flag is sufficient? If a train has multiple operators in multiple countries (this hasn't yet arisen) then one flag followed by a list of operators in the country, and repeated for each country/list of operators would be sufficient. Robevans123 (talk) 10:22, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The flags are excessive, they're against the Manual of Style, and there was a consensus to remove them; but FlyAkwa owns this article, so they cannot be removed. bobrayner (talk) 22:35, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Haha very funny bobrayner.... Flags are really usefull, and we have already accepted, because of your fundamentalism, to delete the flags of manufacturers... Well, about the repetition of the same flag, for each company, it's for unification of style. The repetition is not absolutely essential, but is here for the presentation. --FlyAkwa (talk) 12:16, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

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ETR 1000 operating speed
I have tagged the entry for the Italian ETR 1000 as requiring a reliable source to verify that it operates in revenue service at a maximum speed of 360 km/h. The corresponding article states that it is intended to operate at 360 km/h, but initially operates at 300 km/h. As the "Operating speed" column in this list is supposed to be for the actual maximum speed in revenue operation, the figure may need to be changed if the ETR 1000 is not yet operating at 360 km/h. --DAJF (talk) 02:23, 8 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks to for adding a reference for the planned operating speed. I have replaced this with a more recent (September 2014) reference which also details the scheduled May 2015 entry into service date. However, this still does not address the issue of whether it is accurate to describe the operating speed of the ETR 1000 as 360 km/h even though a) the train is not yet in service, and b) there is some doubt over whether it will actually operate at 360 km/h given the fact that the infrastructure is currently limited to a maximum speed of 300 km/h. I am concerned that leaving this entry as it is wrongly implies that train services are operating at 360 km/h, when the fastest train services currently operating anywhere in the world run at 320 km/h. Now that the list has recently been split into separate tables for trains in service and trains no longer in service, maybe we should also create a separate table for trains, such as the ETR 1000 and Eurostar e320, not yet in service. --DAJF (talk) 06:30, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Unsourced Alvia Class 105 service introduction date
I have tagged the service entry year (2012) claimed for the Spanish Alvia Class 105 as "Dubious", since, apart from being unsourced, the corresponding Wikipedia article does not verify that the train is even in service yet. If someone can verify the service entry date with a reliable source, that would be greatly appreciated. --DAJF (talk) 14:09, 23 October 2014 (UTC)
 * CAF's own website doesn't actually say anything about production or deliveries, just some vague specs. Railway Gazette has mentioned it twice; the latter article said that a prototype was being tested in December 2011. I see no reason to believe that it's in production or in service. bobrayner (talk) 20:56, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree with DAJF and bobrayner. RENFE "our fleet" web page does't mention this Class 105. We should delete this entry. --FlyAkwa (talk) 00:02, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Railjet inclusion
Technically Railjet formation is just a set of conventional coaches with a cab car on the other end and conventional locomotive at the other end. Yes, they have branded it strongly and apparently the set of coaches are kept to a fixed formation with semi-permanent couplings between the coaches, but nonetheless technically these are just conventional locomotive hauled push-pull trains. For example, some of the Finnish Intercity trains use similar (but more flexible) consist and those aren't listed here even when they fulfill the 200 km/h criterion. Caret (talk) 09:35, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I will add that the Northeast Regional, propelled by a Siemens locomotive based on that of the Railjet, also regularly reaches 125mph (201 km/h) but isn't included. Either all (Railjet, VR, Amtrak) should be included, or they should be listed together as Siemens sprinter derivatives. 2601:184:4180:D8CF:1C37:5848:4384:6FEE (talk) 19:54, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

CRH380A speed
This list states that CRH380A operational speed is 300 kmph, while the dedicated page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railways_CRH380A) states 355kmph and this source (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11133241/Bullet-train-at-50-rise-and-fall-of-the-worlds-fastest-train.html) states 380 kmph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.104.37.203 (talk) 19:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
 * There is a big difference between the designed speed, the claimed speed, and the official current commercial speed. All routes are now limited to 300 km/h in China (Wikipedia is not a source), and then, CRH380A (like CRH380B&C and CRH3C) are limited now to 300 km/h. CRH3C is the only train that ran until july 2011 at 350km/h. Due to high wear and tear and for safety and economic reasons, all speeds have been lowered by 50km/h at this date. Please consult List_of_high-speed_railway_lines maintained by some Chinese editors. --FlyAkwa (talk) 23:22, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Telling the future
We don't generally report things until they have happened. See WP:CRYSTAL. --John (talk) 23:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, generally we don't report things that have not yet happened (or when contracts and projects are very theoretical), and I often delete ghosts projects (recently, I delete the KTX-III, that seems to never exist).
 * But, the British A-Train, the French Regio2n and the US Avelia Liberty are not currently in commercial service, but can be considered as "sure", as contracts are real and ratified (or trains already in test, such as the Regio2N).
 * I'm not American, and I fight against nationalist prides advertisement and propaganda in the list, but I think the Avelia is admissible in the list.
 * --00:06, 13 December 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by FlyAkwa (talk • contribs)
 * The trouble with making it up to one editor's opinion of what's admissible is that it opens things up to challenge. It would be much easier to make it just things that are already real. --John (talk) 10:12, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Since the creation of this page (by me), near future trains (with official date of delivery) have been allowed on this page. Lot of trains that were annouced in the list are now "in service". Lot of editors have edited the page, corrected it, upgraded it, but none, for years, have had a problem with this rule.
 * We can't consider that it's my own opinion, but the opinion of all editors, and especially DAJF that helped to manage the list for a long time.
 * --FlyAkwa (talk) 15:25, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, consider that I am having a problem with your "rule". --John (talk) 19:06, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Fast trains with slower operational speeds
Australia has some trains that reach the high-speed rail bracket. The Transwa WDA/WDB/WDC class, for instance, has a top design speed of 200 km/h. You can read its product sheet (as per the manufacturer) here. Then there' the XPT, which has a maximum official record speed of 193 km/h, slightly below the 200 mark. Finally, the Electric Tilt Train holds the Australian speed record of 210 km/h. The catch? Due to trackage, these trains are limited to a (still fairly reasonable) 160 km/h while in service. Same with the V/Line VLocity and Diesel Tilt Train, on that note.

The point is, these are fast trains. However, unlike their record or their design speed, their operational speeds fail to meet the high-speed mark. Should these trains be included or not?

Thanks, trainsandtech (talk) 09:16, 28 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi. According to UIC definition, high-speed trains are intended to run at/above 250 km/h on dedicated tracks, and at/above 200 km/h on classic upgraded tracks, with a high level of service, and heigh level of integration with its infrastructure. The Australians trains are classical trains or EMUS, able to run at 200 km/h, but don't match the UIC definition (like a lot of other trains in the World). --FlyAkwa (talk) 14:13, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The XPT is a HSR-capable diesel train that isn’t really “classical,” and is based off the HST. The Transwa is the same, but not HST-based. What you said solves the issue. I find the usage of that definition a bit odd in this article, though. I think it would be better off saying “this list only shows trains that run at 200 km/h or more in service. Trains capable of this speed but limited by their environment or classical trains able to reach this speed are excluded.” Thanks, trainsandtech (talk) 09:44, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

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Adding locomotives
Personally, I think that it should be appropriate adding locomotives, since they also provide several high-speed rail services at or above 200 kmh (125 mph). In fact this page should be renamed "List of High-speed trains and locomotives." This would allow the page not just to include EMU's and DMU's.VivaBlondie2000 (talk) 21:39, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I for one agree. Mostly. I think two separate lists should be created, one for multiple-unit trains, and one for locomotives. I don't think there's any reason to rename the article though. A locomotive is part of a train. NCLI (talk) 15:31, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

and, please discuss here about locomotives.

I personally strongly disagree with adding them in the list.


 * A locomotive can run alone on its own, without coaches in the back. A locomotive can haul any type of coaches and wagons, provided they have adequate couplings. An SNCF Class BB 26000 can haul both 200 km/h passenger trains and 160 km/h freight trains of containers, it doesn't make it a "high-speed train". The locomotive can be easily uncoupled in a few minutes and haul different coaches minutes later. You can couple and uncouple coaches at will and mix them between different trains.


 * A trainset is a single unit and cannot run if it is incomplete. They are designed as a single articulated vehicle. You cannot detach the power cars from a trainset manually, it needs to be done at the depot with special tooling, and will take a long time. In most cases, the power cars cannot run or their own without their coaches that carry essential electronics and equipment - this is the case of the TGVs. If they can, like the fist generation ICE, they can only go at very low speeds within the depot, and cannot haul any other rail vehicle (no standard coach, for example). Uncoupling coaches of the trainset is also very complicated, especially in the case of the articulated TGV. This special coupling provides the necessary rigidity and stability for very high speeds. Uncoupling is exclusively done during heavy maintenance. TGV coaches remain together throughout their life, even 40 years after. Coaches of different trainsets never get mixed together.

NCLI, this is where you are wrong. A locomotive-hauled fast train and high-speed trainsets are fundamentally different.

--NemesisIII (talk) 20:21, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

2601:184:407F:8705:EC5B:DC18:E7E:81B4 (talk) 04:49, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You've made it clear that there is a distinction between these types of trains, but why does this distinction matter? Both fit the limited definition of a train that goes at high speed, and the broader sense of sustainable, convenient, and rapid transport that high-speed trains represent.

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 * KTX (Korea Train eXpress).jpg

What is a modern high-speed train?
Should we raise the lower bound for what a modern high-speed train is to 250 km/h, which seems to be a commonly accepted definition in modern times? Of course, the older trains should stay, but I'd argue new inclusions should be able to do at least 250 km/h. NCLI (talk) 15:29, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Personally I would prefer to raise the minimum speed to 250 km/h, but we use the official definition of high-speed rail by UIC, and the lower bound is fixed to 200 km/h. --FlyAkwa (talk) 00:47, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Why no experimental trains?
Why not give them their own category? NCLI (talk) 12:24, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Imperial unit conversions.
It would be a good idea to add MPH conversions to the speeds. I'm not going to add them since it would take ages for me to have to rewrite the speeds using the Convert template.Slender (talk) 15:22, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Maximum speed record
The "record" column is for officially recognized records by UIC (It's me that created this table and this column 9 years ago). It's not for "record recognized by RDPC" or "record recognized by NCLI" or "record recognized by any other guy". By the way, all records have been made by prepared or tuned trainsets. It's false to think that a record can been made by a train without any control, revision and preparation. --FlyAkwa (talk) 00:45, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

That is just not true. Plenty of trains have set records without being modified from their commercial variant. Trains which are known to have been built or heavily modified to set a record, such as the current french world record holder TGV, should be under experimental trains in my opinion. That you created this article is irrelevant to its future direction. It is not your property. Also, please refrain from naming other editors out of nowhere.NCLI (talk)

I also don't see why the UIC is needed to verify every record. Sure, if a train claims to have broken a world speed record, it matters. But if we're just talking a train setting a record for a country, for instance, any reputable 3rd party verification should be sufficient, surely. That's how the rest of Wikipedia operates, after all. NCLI (talk)

Northeast Maglev
The Northeaset Maglev is not "Soon in service". Zero work has been done, it's not all close to any sort of approval, and the project really just consists of a website. The supposed 2028 launch is unsourced and laughable. So, I've removed it. 2601:184:407F:8705:EC5B:DC18:E7E:81B4 (talk) 04:37, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Locomotive or muti-unit
As you know, Tgv is a series push pull high speed trainset, should we count the trainset that use the “style” of tgv as locomotive haul? Or still count as emu?

Recent change from "high speed trains" to "train" with power cars and multiple units, TGV, ICE 1 and 2, Intercity 225
As with the comment in the section above, there is some room to discuss the ambiguity between placing trains into the first section which has been renamed to "trains with power cars and multiple units" and locomotive hauled trains, like the TGV, ICE 1 and 2 and Intercity 225, whose locomotives are rarely detached, such as the Class 401 and 402 locomotives in the ICE 1 and 2 trains respectively, BR Class 91 with IC225, and TGV's clearly defined power cars.

Should these changes in allocation to different sections be reflected following this new naming of the sections (not sure why this was done as well) AlbusWulfricDumbledore (talk) 20:01, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand the difference between trains with "power cars" and the traditional definition of multiple-unit trains. NCLI (talk)

When trains should be added to the list(Sparked by China's CRRC 600 & Super Bullet Maglev)
I chose to remove the two trains mentioned in the title, because there is currently no announced track for them to run on, and no prototype has been shown running at anything close to the announced top speed. I think that, at the very least, there should be a line under construction for a train to run on before it gets added to this list. Especially for major projects like these trains, which are claimed to be capable of running significantly faster than any train before them. NCLI (talk) 16:32, 27 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I see someone added a "In testing and development" category just for maglev trains. No other category has this, so I am removing it. If you want it to be added back in, justify why we should list these trains separately. NCLI (talk) 15:12, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Acela
Is Acela an high speed rail?

2601:204:EA7F:220:E159:45BB:B700:8EB5 (talk) 04:06, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Odd definition
If someone asked me "Which train runs the fastest?", I would say "Whichever runs at the highest average speed in real service". I don't want to know that engine A hit a top speed of X once. Shushimnotrealstooge (talk) 22:14, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

mismatch
The speed for TGV M on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_trains does not match the information on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF_TGV_M 130.238.112.129 (talk) 03:53, 13 June 2024 (UTC)