Maximum speed possible with conventional railway technology

[mike57]

I know this has been discussed before, and various answers have been put forward.

I realise that rocket power, maglev, and possibly linear motors may allow far higher speeds, but what I am interested in is what could be acheived with the current technology.

So to set the parameters:

• Wheel driven
• Steel wheel on steel rail
• Standard gauge
• Power fed by overhead catenary
• Capable of carrying pasengers in safety and comfort, and lets say at least 100 passengers
• Travelling trough normal terrain, with no vacuum tube or similar.

As I see it there are the following things which might limit the maximum possible speed:

• Adhesion of wheel/rail interface, at some point putting more power in will just result in wheel slip
• Ability of the (I assume overhead catenary) to provide more power, voltage could be raised but that brings its own problems, so assume nomimal 25kV or maybe upto 50kV which I think has been used in South Africa.
• Surface heating due to air friction
• Braking ability (... in safety...)
• Aerodynamics

There may be other things as well

So the question, how fast could a convential rail vehicle travel travel, obviously the French have set the record at 357mph/574kph, and that record required a specially prepared trainset, but it was a set of 'conventional' rail vehicles according to the parameters. So how close to the physical limits for the technology were they.

 

[Irascible]

I would think the limit would be capped by adhesion, unltimately. You could keep a train on the rails with active aerodynamics & suspension, but at some point you're just not going to be able to put enough torque down. Aero drag scales up horribly over somewhere around 210mph or so ( if I'm remembering distant lessons properly ) so I'm pretty impressed the French got as far as they have.