I must disclaim, I have no real interest in trains, but this is my second nerdy train post on the blog in a year!?
With all this talk of a new HS3 line I thought I’d compare reported operating speeds against average speeds across some of the better known lines. The results are in:
I tried to keep the distances similar when calculating average speeds from stations, but didn’t do too well. The average speed is the length of track from Station A to B divided by timetabled route length.
| From | To | Miles | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tokyo | Sendai | 202 | 1.05 |
| Paris | London | 306 | 2.06 |
| London | Birmingham | 116.66 | 0.83 |
| Paris | Marseilles | 466 | 3 |
So it would appear the proposed HS2 will operate at speeds of up to 225mph (25mph faster than the Shinkansen) but still be 76mph slower on average.