Trains

It is almost 180 years since England’s George Stephenson became famous across the world for building the world’s first public steam railway. By 1830, the Liverpool to Manchester Railway was up and running, covering a distance of 40 miles. The great age of steam was born and engineers from India to Australia laboured to create ever more impressive railway systems and locomotives.

Train travel has come a long way since then. Now some of the world’s fastest trains include Japan’s “Bullet” and the French TGV. The advent of the Eurostar has brought a train that reaches speeds of up to 200 mph. Eurostar engineers are currently labouring to make the journey time faster, eventually transporting passengers between London and Paris in under three hours.

The great speeds at which modern trains can now travel mean that accidents now have far more serious implications. 100 people were killed in Germany in 1998 when carriages from a high-speed express train derailed and smashed into a bridge. Around 400 people were killed in 1989 when a gas explosion erupted beneath two trains near the Russian town of Ufa.

800 perished in Bihar, India, in 1981 when a cyclone caused a train to de-rail and fall into a river. In 2004, the North Korean government eventually claimed that up to 200 people had been killed in a train explosion 50 kilometres south of the Chinese border.

Railway safety has become a paramount concern of the modern age. Advanced warning systems are constantly evolved to prevent trains crashing or drivers mistakenly passing red signals. A precision laser technique, which measures track positions with a high degree of accuracy so that the track can be quickly fixed, is also currently in development.

Meanwhile the quest for speedier forms of rail transport goes on. The US Airforce spent $20 million creating the Hypersonic Upgrade Program train. Although it was built for military purposes, the 192-pound train broke the world land speed record in 2003 when it travelled three miles in six seconds – an equivalent speed of reaching New York from London in half an hour. It seems the future of rail transport can only get faster.