Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: high speed

After taking the Eurostar to Brussels, the next leg of the trip to Prague is from Brussels Midi to Koln Hbf, where there is the sleeper train, EC457 the "Phoenix," to Prague, which departs at 2228, and gets into Prague at 0925 the next day. In km/h, the Phoenix isn't necessarily slow (if I'm not mistaken, it's allowed to go 200), but the trip takes all night due to a 20-minute stop in Berlin Sudkreuz, and more importantly, the fact that it runs via Berlin at all. In this video, however, I'm still on the ICE, enjoying close to 250 km/h running.

After changing trains via the London Underground widened lines from Paddington to St. Pancras, to took the Eurostar to Brussels-Midi. For several years, these were the fastest trains I had ever ridden, as they operate at 190 m.p.h. in Britain. I recently found out through research (not my stopwatch) that I broke my record several months after I took this video, as I had unknowingly ridden at 330 km/h, or 205 m.p.h., on the TGV Duplex between Strasbourg and Paris. I remember the ride was fast, but that's it. The train was very overcrowded, I didn't have a window seat, and ultimately I didn't take any photos or video, which is a shame.

This is the first of a series of short railfan videos that I took out of train windows while traveling from Cardiff to Prague. "Railfan" is an important qualifier here. I didn't expect any of these videos to be spectacular by themselves, Instead, they're aimed primarily (maybe only) at railfans who like to watch high-speed train videos. Technically, in modern terms, these Intercity 125 diesel trains, introduced in 1976, aren't high-speed in the modern sense. This is because their maximum legal speed is, and has always been, 125 m.p.h., or about 200 km/h, while the threshold for modern high-speed trains is about 210 km/h, set by the Japanese Series 0 bullet trains in 1966. However, the Series 0 bullet trains ran at 200 km/h from 1964 to 1966, and when the Intercity 125 diesel trains were being developed by British Railways in the 1970s, they were referred to as, literally, "High Speed Trains," or HSTs. Today, they're still often called HSTs, and remain some of the fastest diesel trains in the world, 39 years after being introduced to regular service.

This was that evening, after I had taken the Eurostar to Brussels, and the ICE to Koln. This wasn't my train, but I wanted to try this pan shot anyway. I like to think I got lucky.

Here was a view out the window at 247 Km/h.

As I said before, these trains are quite fast, but 247 Km/h, or 153.48 m.p.h., isn't even the original ICE speed limit from 1991, which was 250Km/h, or about 156 m.p.h. Although the Class 403 and 406 ICE's are rated for 330Km/h, and the Class 402 is rated for 280, 250 is what most of the high speed network is still rated for in Germany. In addition, a large number of ICE routes are over conventional lines where the speed limit is between about 160 and 200. This is really the weakness of the ICE services, not the trains, but the fact that not enough was invested in building dedicated high speed lines.

This was my train, a Class 406 (and possibly the first one I had ridden) that would take me to Bruxelles-Midi.

This is a Class 402 ICE. These were short-lived in production, having only been built between 1995 and 1997 for lower-traffic routes, and only 46 were built. Originally, they were only six-car sets, with a small passenger capacity even for that length, of 391. This is compared to 12 cars and 743 seats on the original 401 Class ICE, 441 for the 8-car Class 403, and 430 for the Class 406.

Koln Hbf sees a lot of ICE traffic. This appears to have been a Class 403 ICE, also called a Velaro. Built by Seimens from 1999 to (officially, at least) 2010, when it was superseded by the Class 407. In the interim, a multi-current version, the Class 406, was also produced. All of these trainsets have been very fast. They were perhaps the first ever trains designed to cruise at 330Km/h, or 205 m.p.h. On speed tests in 2006, a Class 406 achieved a top speed of 407.6 Km/h, or 250.8 m.p.h., which wasn't a world speed record for a train, but a world record for an unmodified production train. The original Class 403 set a speed record for the class of 368 Km/h, or 228.66 m.p.h., in 1999 (to the best of my knowledge, as it was on the original tests).

This was my second breakfast of the day, actually, as I had also had breakfast on the Phoenix. When I travel, I don't usually turn down food, though. That's real wine on the left, as this was, after all, France.

Here it's easier to tell we're in France. The large number of tracks is the giveaway, as well as the land even flatter than Belgium. Other than on the Shinkansen system, there aren't any other networks that I can think of as well suited to highballing as the post-1990 SNCF LGV system.

The Eurostar doesn't really pick up speed until it's well out of Brussels, although I don't know off hand if this was before or after crossing into France and taking the CTRL at Lille. I've just said "France," for the sake of convenience. The Eurostar is, at least, a French train. That we were at full cruising speed was and is, however, obvious.

I didn't get a picture of the ICE that took me to Brussels, as indeed the novelty of high speed trains has partly been wearing off lately. However, it occurred to me that the last time I had taken the Eurostar, one of the greatest high-speed trains ever, I hadn't taken any photographs. I made a point this time of at least taking a few.

After walking through Fantova Kavarna, I got lost in the construction, and ended up on Nastupiste (Platform) 1, where this Pendolino was sitting. Given that I don't get a shot of these every day, I took the picture even though my Ikoflex was empty and so I only had the cameraphone (as was the case with the earlier Hlavni Nadrazi shots in this series).

Well...here it is....my first public video on iPernity. Had Flickr's policies not driven me over here with so many other people, this would also go on Flickr, but instead this is an iPernity exclusive for now. I shot this video seconds before the photo I uploaded right before this.

I have a few ICE photos scattered throughout my photo collection, but only a few on Flickr. I took this one in Munchen Hbf as I was about to get on my train (which wasn't an ICE). #401509-5 is one of the original 401 Class ICE sets from the early 1990's, meaning it can cruise as fast as 280 Km/h (173 m.p.h.) given a dedicated high-speed line rated for 280. That's impressive enough to American ears, but the newer 403 Class can reach 330 Km/h (205 m.p.h.), so it isn't like progress stopped with the first sets, either.

While I was going through the CD of horrible Ritz scans, I also found this one to be really bad, yet previously uploaded in unedited form, so I decided to limit my humiliation and upload an edit of it too.

Built by Siemens, the 402 Class ICE high speed trains were the second production variant of the ICE, introduced in the mid-1990s. They were smaller and slower than the original 401 Class (250 Km/h instead of 280), but they offered better safety, and their shorter length allowed them to handle more minor routes. In this case, though, it doesn't look to have worked, as two sets had to be coupled together.