High-speed rail

High-speed rail is a type of passenger (link is external) rail transport (link is external) that operates significantly faster than traditional rail traffic. As of 2012 the maximum commercial speed was about 300 km/h (185 mph) for the majority of installed systems (China, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, UK), 310 km/h (195 mph) in Spain and 320 km/h (200 mph) in France. The Shanghai Maglev Train (link is external) reaches 431 km/h (268 mph).

High-speed trains travel at their maximum speed on specific tracks, almost all using conventional tracks, generally using standard gauge (except in countries like Russia (link is external), Finland (link is external) and Mongolia (link is external), which continue to use Russian gauge), whilst avoiding at-grade crossings and minimizing curvature of the right-of-way.

The world speed record for conventional high-speed rail is held by the V150 (link is external), a specially configured and heavily-modified version of Alstom (link is external)'s TGV (link is external) which clocked 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph) on a test run. The world speed record for Maglev (link is external) is held by the Japanese experimental MLX01 (link is external): 581 km/h (361 mph).[1] (link is external)

While high-speed rail is usually designed for passenger travel, some high-speed systems also offerfreight (link is external) service. For instance, the French mail service La Poste (link is external) owns a few special TGV trains (link is external) for carrying postal freight.