By Amy Wong: Subscribe to Amy's RSS feed
December 6, 2010 7:35 PM EST
Not long after the announcement of the world's fastest supercomputer, China last Friday reported a high-speed train set a new record, hitting 302 miles per hour (mph).
The record was made during a trial run of a new track running between Beijing and Shanghai, a rail line that should be open for travel sometime in 2012, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
The 16-car bullet train, designed and built by CSR Qingdao Sifang Locomotive and Rolling Stock Co. Ltd, beat the old record of 259 mph it set three months ago.
"This operational experiment shows China's leading position in the sector," a deputy chief engineer with the Chinese Ministry of Railways was quoted as saying in the China Daily. "It is the world's most advanced but cheapest high-speed train."
However, the train's speed cannot compare with modified conventional commercial trains which have better speeds. A modified French TGV train reached 357.2 mph in 2007 and a Japanese magnetically levitated train reached a whopping 361 mph in 2003.
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China, which already has the world's longest high-speed rail network, now plans to link major cities and provinces by adding an extra 8,125 miles (13,000 km) by 2012 and 10,000 miles (16,000 km) by 2020.
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