The world’s fastest train travels a little over twice the speed of the quickest in North America, and footage of it in action has gone viral.
Amtrak’s Acela train bolts along 457 miles of track on the Northeast Corridor between Washington, DC, and Boston, Massachusetts, and it is swift to say the least with speeds of up to 150mph – which is nothing compared to the Japanese Maglev bullet train.
It sounds disrespectful calling the Acela slow, with it being the speediest train in the US that serves six states – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland.
But when a video of bystanders watching the maglev blister past them and out of sight in the space of seconds, it is obvious the US and the rest of the world is poles away from the railway lines in East Asia.
I introduce to you, the Maglev – its name is a mash up between magnet and levitate, but we’ll get to why later.
In April 2015, a manned superconducting Maglev train was clocked at 375mph – which, to put that into comparison, is more than half the speed of a Boeing 747.
The Maglev is a superconducting magnetic train developed by the Central Japan Railway Company and the Railway Technical Institute, which began all the way back in the 1970s.
The way in which it reaches high speeds is simply incredible – it works on the philosophy of magnetic repulsion that takes place between the coaches and the track itself.
When the train reaches 93mph, the magnetic force between the coach and the track is powerful enough to lift the train four inches off the ground it eliminates any friction preventing it from reaching even greater speeds.
Now, a train hurtling around the country at 310mph doesn’t sound safe does it? But apparently it is, in fact Tesla used the same technology in its Hyperloop pod.
Anyway, let’s talk about the hilarious video which shows Japanese bystanders in complete shock at what they just saw… just… saw, with it traveling so fast.
Taking to Reddit one user shared: “The pure f**king delight lol.”
While a second added: “That’s a bit more than half the speed of a commercial flight. For the record the fastest land speed ever recorded was a bit over 1200 km/h, and that thing was basically two rockets strapped on a chair.
“That’s some insane speed. And a whole train is going this fast. I wonder how much kinetic energy it has.
“It’s faster than the fastest animal (bird) on earth (nearly 400km/h, this guy is crazy). Except it’s hundred of ton of metal. I can understand why this guy laughed in face of this level on unnatural power.”
“Someone in the background declared ‘Hai, ijou desu!’, (basically, ‘Well, that’s concluded!’),” another explained.
“It helped set people off laughing, as it’s a phrase that often finishes a speech or presentation that’d you’d expect to go a fair bit longer.”
