High speed rail

Stephenson's Rocket won the Rainhill Trials in October 1829. It averaged 12 miles per hour (19.3 kilometres an hour) while pulling about 12 tonnes, and reached at least 48 kilometres an hour (30 miles per hour) without carriages.

The Stephensons won a £500 prize and Rocket was built for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in September 1830 as the world's first inter-urban passenger railway line.

Before the Shinkansen, the limited express Kodama needed less than 7 hours to travel between Tokyo and Osaka, as of 1958.

Japan's cabinet approved the line in December 1958, ground was broken on 20 April 1959, and a World Bank loan of $80 million followed in 1961.

The Tokaido Shinkansen began commercial service between Tokyo and Osaka on 1 October 1964, with a top speed of 210 kilometres an hour.

In the Shinkansen's first 50 years there was never a fatal derailment or collision.

The International Union of Railways (UIC) atlas for 2025 counts over 67,700 kilometres of high-speed lines in operation, under construction and planned, in more than 20 countries. Over 16,000 kilometres are new lines under construction.

China accounts for more than 47,800 kilometres of that all-stages total, over two-thirds of it.

On 3 April 2007 the TGV V150, an Alstom trainset, reached 574.8 kilometres an hour on the LGV Est line in France.

It beat the 515.3 kilometres an hour set by TGV set 325 in 1990.

On 21 April 2015 a seven-car Series L0 maglev operated by Central Japan Railway reached 603 kilometres an hour on the Yamanashi Maglev Line in Japan. Guinness World Records lists it as the fastest maglev speed.

The train held more than 600 kilometres an hour for about 10.8 seconds, covering about 1.8 kilometres.

The Yamanashi line is a test track. It was extended from 18.4 kilometres to 42.8 kilometres and recommissioned in August 2013.

The previous maglev record was 581 kilometres an hour, set by the MLX01 prototype in December 2003. The seven-car set had reached 590 kilometres an hour in passenger-carrying trials before the record run.

The L0 is meant for the Chuo Shinkansen, which was planned in 2015 to run at up to 500 kilometres an hour in service.

Central Japan Railway began building the L0 series in 2010.