New "javelin" class HST launches in the uk

[Darren Jeffries]

A 140mph Japanese 'Javelin' high-speed train service launching in south-east England at the end of June is having its first test run on the route.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8106429.stm

[disturbman]

Certainly one the fastest sub-urban type connection in the world. I'm kind of ambivalent on this subject. I do think that the Javelin service is just going to help London sprawl even further away than it allready does.

 

But, eh, nice train.

[bikkuri bahn]

Hey, it's the JR Kyushu 885 series, but on steroids and with a better paint scheme.

(thanks for posting the link!)

[to2leo]

Hey, it's the JR Kyushu 885 series, but on steroids and with a better paint scheme.

(thanks for posting the link!)

 

Hmm I wonder if Kato is going to create them for the UK market...

[scott]

I'm kind of ambivalent on this subject. I do think that the Javelin service is just going to help London sprawl even further away than it allready does.

 

Yeah, it wouldn't be the first time--that's the what the early interurbans were for; getting the wealthier commuter away from the teeming masses. [erg--planner training....conflicting...with....rail geekery....ouch....]

 

I don't know about the UK, but these days it's hard to imagine a train making things worse here, where people already commute for hours by car in the larger sprawl cities.

 

Another news video here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7780172.stm

 

I couldn't help smiling to see that the name of the slight, balding transport minister is "Lord Adonis." 

[Guest ___]

Not bad looking for an HST. Sure beats the trains in Ireland. I mean really green and yellow, really. (Sorry, never been on a British train while I Was living in Scotland, the Irish while not in the UK, are the closet thing I can comment on)

[Claude_Dreyfus]

Hey, it's the JR Kyushu 885 series, but on steroids and with a better paint scheme.

(thanks for posting the link!)

 

Hmm I wonder if Kato is going to create them for the UK market...

Someone has already converted one of these from the Kato model...I posted a link on here a few months back.

 

These units do seem to have caught the imagination, and the name 'Javelin' seems to have stuck - although this was coined in connection with their use as a shuttle for the 2012 Olympic Games. Officially they are the class 395. Top-quality train on a top-quality track.... There has been a little needle over the fact some slower trains are being axed on the 'original' lines, to Canterbury and Maidstone for example, but on the whole they have been welcomed.

 

 

Incidently some of these new 'smilies' are pretty cool..... :blob6:

[disturbman]

I'm kind of ambivalent on this subject. I do think that the Javelin service is just going to help London sprawl even further away than it allready does.

I don't know about the UK, but these days it's hard to imagine a train making things worse here, where people already commute for hours by car in the larger sprawl cities.

 

If I remember correctly the Javelin are made to shorten the lenght of allready commuting nuts who lived far, far away from city center. In any case having such efficient system of transport will induce a little movement of population between London and the linked cities. It happens everytime with the TGV in France, I don't see any reason why it would not in Britain.

 

And speaking about US, I've read somewhere that some politics are starting to think that they need to destroy entire neighboorhoods (meaning suburbs) in order to recompact the cities and make it overall more economic. I think they are testing that kind of ideas on Flint for the moment but there is plan to put that in action in other amercian cities. Unfortunately it's not a trend, more a way to respond to the actual (and past) economic crisis. I would hope that these actions could trigger a new of thinking cities in America but it still does seem hopeless.

[to2leo]

Hey disturbman,

 

Now that the US / North American Auto Industry has mostly gone to Europe and Japan.  You will see the N. American urban policies change pretty quickly for transit and walking.  Having an urban planning background myself, you will be shocked at how many policies we created in N. America that serves the auto industry.

[CaptOblivious]

Hey disturbman,

 

Now that the US / North American Auto Industry has mostly gone to Europe and Japan.  You will see the N. American urban policies change pretty quickly for transit and walking.  Having an urban planning background myself, you will be shocked at how many policies we created in N. America that serves the auto industry.

 

Of course, those of is in NA wouldn't be shocked at all! I'm not an urban planner, but there is an active community of them here in St Louis: NA's biggest urban failure. 1900: no. 4 in population after NY, Chicago and Philly, with a population of nearly 600,000 and growing so rapidly as to be easily no. 2 within 50 years. 2000: no. 58 in population, clocking in just over 350,000 people. Most of this due in large part to massive failures of urban planning…spurred in no small part by the construction of six distinct interstate highways to help relocate white flight to the new and rather distant 'burbs. Indeed, we had the very first interstate highway in the nation! So those of us who live in the city are pretty sensitive to these kinds of issues.

[Guest ___]

Hey disturbman,

 

Now that the US / North American Auto Industry has mostly gone to Europe and Japan.  You will see the N. American urban policies change pretty quickly for transit and walking.  Having an urban planning background myself, you will be shocked at how many policies we created in N. America that serves the auto industry.

 

We started to see this here in the Washington DC area, especially in NoVA about did fifteen years ago start up here. where I live in Maryland, just between DC and Baltimore, we started adopting this system within the last five to ten years becasue of the traffic in this area coupled with the air quality being some of the worst in North America.

 

To2leo, we gotta chat sometime, back when I was in college, I was active with the county transportation board, so I learned a lot about urban traffic planning. It's been years since I could talk with someone else on transportation planning issues.

[Welshbloke]

I can't say I'm really that impressed by the 140mph part.

 

The old diesel HSTs could manage that without much effort. To the extent that they were eventually fitted with speed limiters that shut off the rear power car if you tried to go much over 125mph. The Class 91 "Intercity 225" was designed for 140mph running but was never allowed to do so as they were too cheapskate to upgrade the signalling systems.

 

The APT would have been able to run at 155mph on conventional lines, if political meddling hadn't killed the project just as it was beginning to produce results.

[Mudkip Orange]

Man, those trains are spiff.

 

Of course, it's the UK, so the 140mph top speed will be attained on a single 3-mile section of track while the rest of the line is 70 dropping to 20 in station and yard limits, but hey. They LOOK cool...