Japan, April 21, 2015. Somewhere in the Yamanashi prefecture, in its forests, we imagine a hiker from Tokyo taking a leisurely walk through the area. He suddenly feels a movement nearby. Looking out of the corner of his eye he realizes that something has happened at an indescribable speed, but he is not sure as he has not felt any vibration, and hardly any noise. He has just witnessed almost without realizing how history is made. The maglev train, of magnetic levitation, has passed before their incredulous eyes at a speed of 603.5 km/h breaking the record for railway speed, surpassing the maximum of 580.9 km/h that it had reached 12 before. Maglev trains use magnets for their propulsion, levitating above the track, hence produce hardly any vibration or noise.
In 2021, 6 years after that feat, China has already shown the world its new Maglev prototype, which seeks to be the fastest on the planet with the goal of reaching 620 km/h. But if the future of trains seems fascinating to us, as its present already is, its history is no less interesting.
Leaving aside the eternal battle between China and Japan, if we talk about history and trains we have to move to Europe. The first train was built over 200 years ago in England, and although it traveled on rails it was pulled by horses. Soon after, in 1814, George Stephenson revolutionized the industry by manufacturing the steam locomotive, first used to link two cities on the world’s first railway line, which ran from Manchester to Liverpool. Since then, the world of railways has experienced extraordinary advances, moving from steam to electricity, and in this last mode, reaching speeds closer to those that can be carried on average by a commercial airplane. Today, practically all European countries have high speed lines, many of them crossing borders, such as the Eurostar, which connects London with Brussels or Paris. The French TGV, which opened in 1981 connecting Paris with Lyon in about 2 hours, has little to envy the new Asian Maglev. Being a conventional rail train, the TGV also broke a historical record at the time, when on April 3, 2007, an Alsthom firm train reached 574.8 km/h while transporting passengers between Paris and Strasbourg.
Despite all the technological advances and the modernization of designs, the charm of traveling by train remains in a certain way. Unlike traveling by car, which seems more common to us and where the road is also shared with other vehicles, moving along the railways usually gives us the impression of traveling unexplored routes, of traveling through unknown lands. On the other hand, in addition to being considered, together with the plane, the safest means of transport in terms of accidents (and now also in relation to Covid-19), the train continues to be one of the most comfortable and pleasant ways to travel. Platforms and search engines like Omio give you the chance to compare schedules and prices to travel on the main European train companies, as well as book and buy tickets quickly and easily.