CHINA | High Speed Rail

[duskdawn]

Complete construction 5/29/2006 and will be functional in later June.

[fourlin]

UFO!

[Tahimek]

Originally Posted by fourlin

UFO!

Haha, those were the same three letters that appeared in my head when I first saw this!

This station looks so massive, it resembles a stadium.

[Facial]

Marvelous - - - many of these train stations look better than airports.

[Xusein]

It looks like a Spaceship

[RKS]

the illuminated roof looks like a living structure

[gaoanyu]

It doesn't look large enough for a Chinese train stations.
How many entrances are there?

[zergcerebrates]

The Train was being tested at Beijing's Testing Loop.

Still wondering where it'll run to and from.

Pics:

[Jiangwho]

[gaoanyu]

I am not amused if these were actually made in Nippon

[zergcerebrates]

Originally Posted by gaoanyu

I am not amused if these were actually made in Nippon

They are. The first batches are made in Japan the rest will be made in China. Whats wrong with Japanese products? Don't tell me you have none from them. I know relations between Japan and China has been sour but theres no reason why they shouldn't buy the train from them and learn their technology(besides they agreed to transfer it to us). Japanese are excellent in technology and we should be humble and learn from them so in the future we may excel in that field.

[gaoanyu]

Originally Posted by zergcerebrates

They are. The first batches are made in Japan the rest will be made in China. Whats wrong with Japanese products? Don't tell me you have none from them. I know relations between Japan and China has been sour but theres no reason why they shouldn't buy the train from them and learn their technology(besides they agreed to transfer it to us). Japanese are excellent in technology and we should be humble and learn from them so in the future we may excel in that field.

I am not particularly against Japanese products. Indeed, products from any nations, if they are good value for high quality, we say we buy them.
Nothing wrong with tech transfer, because I think tech transfer is the way to go ahead, like if all techs are shared, I am sure the world would be better off. Just like some people are advocating the ideas of open source software.
Maybe I was mistaken. I thought China has been developing its high speed trains for years now, why wouldn't they just use our own technology? I wouldn't mind if ours are a bit slower than the Japanese ones. In fact, I think the China star can run at around 300km/h, why wouldn't they just use this one?

[thyrdrail]

Originally Posted by gaoanyu

...I thought China has been developing its high speed trains for years now, why wouldn't they just use our own technology? I wouldn't mind if ours are a bit slower than the Japanese ones. In fact, I think the China star can run at around 300km/h, why wouldn't they just use this one?

umm...maybe they are just not good enough for the amount of money they have to spend to build the system. if you going to spend billions, why not get the best quality?

[gaoanyu]

Originally Posted by thyrdrail

umm...maybe they are just not good enough for the amount of money they have to spend to build the system. if you going to spend billions, why not get the best quality?

Then it's self-proven that our research is a failure.

[desirous]

Originally Posted by gaoanyu

Then it's self-proven that our research is a failure.

Why is it a failure? In the global economy, self-sufficiency is not the ideal. Look at where that idea did for North Korea. Is China a "failure" for buying Russian airplanes? I think not. It's practicality. Use your own technology when it catches up with the times. No country can become strong enough on self-reliance alone.

[miamicanes]

Originally Posted by gaoanyu

Then it's self-proven that our research is a failure.

Not at all. It just proves that at the moment the plans were being finalized a few years ago, it ended up being cheaper or more expedient to just buy the trains from Japan.

Remember, even if you "have" the technology, you can't just snap your fingers and have a factory ready to manufacture trains using it appear overnight. It takes years to go from first prototype to production-ready train. That's the hardest thing for any engineer to try explaining to salespeople, who never seem to grasp that just because you have something in front of them that "sort of" works (with team of engineers standing behind the curtain, working furiously to keep it from crashing and burning) does not mean you have something yet that you can actually take and start using in the real world. Ten years from now, the rail systems buying trains from Japan today will probably be buying cheaper and better ones from China.

[gaoanyu]

I fully understand your points as myself is working in the engineering sector.
Maybe I did not state myselves clearly.
I am not against technology transfers, in fact, I am a big fan of it.
But I think China has taken too long to develop its own high-speed train tech. If these research bodies do not have a clear ideas as what to achieve and do not set clear schedules, I think the time and money are wasted.
As often happen in China now, a lot of research projects do not have clear schedules and goals, so most of the research funds do not yield commercial or civil products, this is what I am against.
But then again, I guess this is also China will also need to learn. i.e. how to develop sort of an effective scheme for carrying out and assessing government-funded research projects.

[desirous]

When Japan invented their first high-speed train, China was struggling to feed itself. Being on the brink of deploying domestic HSR technology should be something to be proud of. The research isn't wasted if future deployments are with Chinese-made trains; this is only one small portion of a future nationwide system, I presume.

[google_abcd]

Another Three-Gorge/Tibet railway like project
Good for China's infrastructure
-------------------------
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060803/bs_afp/chinarail

China building 27-billion-dollar train line from Beijing to Shenzhen


Thu Aug 3, 2:43 AM ET



BEIJING (AFP) - China is building a 27-billion-dollar train line from Beijing to the southern economic hub of Shenzhen and foreign investors will be invited to join the project, state press reported.

The new 2,300-kilometer (1,420-mile) railway will cut travel time between the capital and Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, from 24 hours to 10, the China Daily said, citing the National Development and Reform Commission.

The track will be designed to allow trains to travel at speeds of at least 200 kilometers an hour, more than twice as fast as the current line, it said.

Work on some sections of the railway has already begun and the entire project is expected to be completed by 2010.

The newspaper, citing government officials, said the entire project was expected to cost around 220 billion yuan (27.5 billion dollars), with foreign investment welcomed.

"We encourage investors from home and abroad and we think it will be a profitable railway," a railways ministry official surnamed Huang said in the report.

The total investment will be recovered within six years of services on the line starting, Huang said.

Construction of a section of the line between Wuhan, the capital of China's central Hubei province, and Guangzhou, the capital of southern Guangdong province in which Shenzhen also lies, began in 2004.

However the National Development and Reform Commission, the government's main economic planning body, only released the blueprint for the entire project on Wednesday, the China Daily said.

The commission said the new railway would be solely for passengers, leaving the old track to carry cargo.

The project is separate from another multi-billion-dollar railway to be built between Beijing and Shanghai, which is also expected to be completed by 2010 and be open to foreign investment.

The Beijing-Shanghai line is epected to cut travel time between China's two most important cities from around 13 hours to five, with the trains expected to reach speeds of 350 kilometers an hour.

The investment costs for that project have not been announced although reports have suggested as much as 25 billion dollars will be ploughed into it.

China announced last year an ambitious plan to spend 250 billion dollars by 2020 to renovate and expand the nation's rail network, one of the largest in the world.

[Yardmaster]

Sounds good to me!