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[quote user="Murphy Siding"]      Other than making headlines, what are they hoping to accomplish with this? [/quote]<a href="http://www.record2007.com/site/index_en.php">http://www.record2007.com/site/index_en.php</a>The Catenary needs to be changed to a flying type if it should survive sustained speeds above 200 mph, looking at the pantograph skipping along the wire in the video I linked here makes me wonder at which point does the pantograph fail to fly close to the wire long enough to transfer any useable electricity to the locomotive and starve the entire train?The wheels were amazing, the trackwork flawless at those speeds. At which level of speed does the system begin to fail? The heat build up must be awesome. What of the ballast? At those speeds or even higher would individual rocks need to be glued down? You laugh but that dust being kicked up at those speeds looks like one you wont want near your car or you. How are you going to dissapate the braking heat should you toss the anchor out at those speeds?The people were comfortable enough but the side to side motion can make a person sick if amplified long and often enough. At what level does the suspension fail to provide an acceptable structural support at these speeds or even faster?Coming out of the low speeds into high speeds require huge amounts of horsepower. The technology to generate the power to move an object at X speed is ALOT more than one that chugs along at 50 mph. I recall from trucking that my required horsepower availible to the wheels needed to be double if not quadrupled to maintain 110+ mph over 55. Any change in grade or curve dramatically loads the engines. At what point does the speed becomes so great as not to be sustainable?The carbodies, they need to be stout enough to fly at these speeds. Airliners do it all the time with a aluminum tube at twice or three times cruise speeds in temperatures low enough to render normal steels brittle. Not only these tubes must with stand the stress they need to stand up to internal pressurization. We are already pressurizing trains at very high altitudes. Where is the limit at which the stresses along the three dimensions and the G forces become unsafe?Then you ask about why we do these speed records? because we can and will.The lessons learned will only improve our safety at very high speeds in the future.Personally anything over 150 mph on land qualifies as flight because I cannot see far enough down the ground to decide if that deer is off to one side or on the road in time to do anything about it.
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