April 21, 2015
A still-intact world speed record for rail vehicles was established in Japan when a seven-car L0 Series train reached a maximum of 375 miles (603 kilometers) per hour. This record-breaking trip took place on a test track in the city of Tsuru in Yamanashi Prefecture, which is part of the Chūbu region of Japan’s main island of Honshū.
The L0 Series trains have been developed by the Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central), the main railway operator in the Chūbu region, and they are high-speed maglev trains. “Maglev” is short for “magnetic levitation,” and this type of train rises approximately 3.9 inches (10 centimeters) above the tracks and is pushed forward by electromagnets.
The L0 Series train used for the history-making ride on April 21, 2015, attained its top speed at 10:48 a.m. — only about four minutes after the start of that test run. The train sustained that speed for 10.8 seconds and covered 1.1 miles (1.8 kilometers) altogether during that time.
A total of 49 JR Central employees were on board for this run. They included Yasukazu Endo, the head of the maglev test center where the trip occurred. He later told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, “The ride was comfortable and stable.”
Photo Credit: User:江戸村のとくぞう – Wikimedia Commons (licensed under Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International — CC BY-SA 4.0)
For more information on the record-breaking ride of an L0 Series train on April 21, 2015, please check out Japan’s maglev train breaks world speed record with 600km/h test run | Japan | The Guardian
Additional information on the L0 Series trains is available at L0 Series – Wikipedia
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