 Good day, train lovers! This is the last station before our final destination: today and in the next post, well have a look at the historical counterparts of the very last two locomotives you can find in Train Valley 2. Were looking into present day now: these are trains that you can easily find and ride. Comparatively clean, insanely fast, and safest than ever, todays trains are small moving marvels of cutting-edge technology. For the first leg of this journey were going to France, so brace yourselves, for this train goes really fast!
The TGV POS
The TGV is the whole line of French high-speed trains (the letters stand just for Train Grand Vitesse). Its first prototype was built in 1969 and funny enough they worked with gas turbines (basically burning gas oil to produce energy) instead of electricity. Regardless of their performance, the 1973 energy crisis prompted the French authorities to discard this prototype, deeming it to be uneconomic. On the other hand, France had started building nuclear power stations all over the country, so there was plenty of (comparatively) cheap electricity to be used
So, in the end, their engineers turned to electricity from overhead lines and took many of the new technologies developed for the failed TGV 001, like high-speed brakes, aerodynamics, and new signaling systems. Several years later, the first electric prototype was completed and deployed for testing, and after some trials, the French administration decided to commit to the TGV project and started to fund it for good. In 1980 the first high-speed line was opened. After a few years, a good part of the French territory was covered by high-speed rails; in 1994, the Eurostar service connected continental Europe to London crossing the Channel Tunnel.
 (Photo from Wikipedia)
The POS itself is in service since 2006; it is a curious specimen, having been built by connecting single-deck carriages of the earlier TGV Rseau with new power cars and the now free TGV Rseau power cars are also in use with other carriages in hybrid sets, so the Rseau spawned not one but two lineages of high-speed trains. The POS power cars have the particularity of being asynchronous: in case of failure, the broken engine can be isolated in order to make the rest work without its output, thus allowing it to reach the station to get fixed without interrupting the service.
The TGV is famed for its safety: it has never suffered a major accident in its entire history. But thats not the only reason for its fame: its also insanely fast. The POS itself is a record-breaking train: in 2007 it set a new world speed record on conventional rails, reaching up to 574.8 km/h. Because the train was slightly modified for these trials, it is considered a somehow unofficial record but this max speed is still impressive, especially when combined with the safety record of the TGV in general. So if you ever ride a TGV, enjoy the ride without worrying for a second at how fast youre going!
Our in-game counterpart keeps the same slender, elegant lines, with the bullet-shaped nose and wide frontal window. You can also recognize its long and stretch lateral windows. Its name is Champion, and you can guess why. This train wont stop at anything to get you to your destination and fast!
That's all for today! We have only one stage left to reach the final station, where we will get acquainted with the last high-speed train. It is truly legendary and is absolutely worthy to complete our long journey through the milestones of the history of train development. For us, railways are a very special world and we believe that the readers of our historical notes are starting to feel similarly (or we just reinforced this feeling). We are anxiously awaiting our next stop. See you later!
----
tvhook Train Valley 2 Discord Server.
tv2computer Our Twitter.
|
