High speed train debuts on Wuhan Guangzhou railway

China on Saturday launched what it described as the world's fastest train service covering a distance of 1,068 kilometers at the average speed of 350 kilometers an hour. The distance between Wuhan in central China and Guangzhou in the country's south was covered by the high speed train in 2 hours 45 minutes.

The train reached a maximum speed of 394.2 kilometers per hour during trail runs that begun on December 9.

The commercial operation was launched with two trains covering the distance while passing through 20 different cities along the route.

The high speed line will use technology developed in co operation with foreign firms such as Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom.

The era of high speed railway began in China in 2004 when Guangzhou was linked to Shenzhen, both in Guangdong Province, with a train traveling at 160 km per hour. This was followed by the launch of a high speed line linking the capital with the port city of Tianjin at the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The government spent more than 20 years lifting the speed of passenger trains from an average of 43 kilometers per hour in 1978 to 100 kilometers per hour in 2001. It took only nine years to reach 350 kilometers per hour.

Chinese government recently announced it plans to build 42 high speed lines by 2012 in order to spur economic growth amid the global downturn. China has unveiled a massive rail development program, considered to be the world's biggest plan outside the United States. The goal is to take the rail network from the current 86,000 kilometers to 120,000 kilometers.

(Sourced from Xinhua and Shanghai Daily)