A test run of the UK's fastest train, the Javelin, took place in London today, in preparation for the service to begin on 29 June.
The train can travel at speeds of up to 140mph, which is set to reduce some journey times by around 43 minutes. It will travel on the Channel Tunnel line and go from Ashford to London – and vice-versa – in 37 minutes (down from 80 minutes) and Ebbsfleet to London will now take 17 minutes.
Olympic effort
The trains are made by Hitachi in Japan and have been built with the Olympics in mind – to take spectators from St Pancras to the main Olympic action in Stratford.
The full service will be in operation from December (the June launch is limited) and will cost passengers a supplementary charge to use.
Like a bullet
Just to prove that they won't be upstaged, this week also saw the announcement of a new Bullet train in Japan.
The E5-type bullet train can reach 199mph, nearly 60mph faster than the UK's effort.
Via BBC
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davdarkelf
June 18th
1. As a regular C2C user where the Channel Line runs alongside the C2C line from Dagenham to Purfleet I've seen these Javelin trains running over the last 6 months. Perhaps these were special engineering versions but these trains have been doing test runs for ages! Was particularly amused to see the BBC yet again misreporting a story - it definitely isn't the first time these trains have been run on that line!
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