Copyright Interesting Engineering
China has begun pre-service trials for CR450, hailed as the world’s fastest bullet. The train clocked a speed of 281 mph (450 km/h) in the trials on the Shanghai-Chongqing-Chengdu high-speed railway line, as revealed on October 21. The CR450’s prototype was unveiled in November last year as a bullet train capable of hitting the 249 mph mark (400 km/h), and subjected to continuous testing across all metrics. Now in its final testing stage, the bullet train has to achieve 373,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) of operation before being cleared for commercial services. Given its latest attempt, the CR450 has surpassed the current fastest speed record of 217 mph (350 km/hr) achieved by CR400 Fuxing trains. Started as a project in 2021 by China State Railway Group, the train is expected to enter commercial operations in 2026, post the evaluation phase. It is manufactured by subsidiaries of the state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC). How does the CR450 achieve its speed? The CR450 is equipped with structural enhancements. Its nose cone has been increased from 41 feet (12.5 meters), as on the existing 217 mph trains, to 49 feet (15 meters), reducing drag. The train has fully enclosed bogies and lower skirt panels beneath carriages, and a design philosophy inspired by high-performance cars. These innovations have helped the train reduce its overall resistance by 22 percent. CR450’s height has also been reduced by 8 inches (20 centimeters), with weight being trimmed by 55 tons. The developers have focused on drag reduction as a top priority, which has also helped achieve dramatic acceleration. Over five years of research and testing, improvements have been measured in minute increments as small as 0.1 percent. The CR450 can accelerate from 0 to 350 km/h in 4 minutes and 40 seconds. This is 100 seconds faster than the existing Fuxing EMUs, which take 6 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the same speed. An EMU is a train made of self-propelled, electric-powered carriages that don’t require a separate locomotive. Decoding the broader vision China’s national television broadcaster CCTV also revealed how the country views this development as a major step towards modern innovation. “The recent test run is the final step for the CR450 to enter the commercial operation phase and will be a milestone symbolizing that the technological prowess of China’s high-speed rail is leaping from ‘Made in China’ to ‘Created in China’,” said CCTV. China’s CR450 project is part of a sweeping initiative to expand and modernize the nation’s world-leading transport network. The country now operates the largest high-speed rail and expressway systems globally, forming an integrated grid that stretches over six million kilometers. Modern transport corridors link over 80 percent of China’s county-level regions, encompassing over 90 percent of its economy and population. The scale of this network was on full display during the recent National Day holiday, when 2.4 billion interregional trips were recorded. Railways alone carried 213 million passengers – averaging 18 million train travelers daily.
