China unveils world's fastest train, at 350 km/hr!

China now boasts of the world's fastest train -- the China Railway High-Speed (CRH) -- that rockets at an average speed train of 350 km per hour! That is, if the train were to ply in India, it would take just 4 hours to run from Mumbai to Delhi.

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The super-high-speed train connects the cities of Guangzhou, which is a business hub in southern China near Hong Kong, and Wuhan (a metropolis in central China). It is a distance of 1,069 km that takes only three hours to complete in the new high-speed train.

Experts say that these high-speed trains will not just shorten the distance between Chinese cities, but also drastically alter the pace at which China's economy is growing and will grow in the future, even as they bring the rural and urban populations much closer to each other.

China has been developing the train for a while now, along with Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom. The CRH can zoom at speeds of 394 km per hour. With this, China's rail network of high-speed lines has risen to over 74,000 miles.

Test runs for the rail link began earlier in December during which it recorded a maximum speed of 394.2 km per hour and the operations officially began on December 26, said Xu Fangliang, general engineer in charge of designing the link, according to Xinhua.

China plans to build 42 more high-speed passenger rail lines -- of about 13,000 miles -- over the next three years. This network will cover more than 90 per cent of the population, reports said.

The Asian giant also plans super-high-speed trains between Beijing and Hong Kong, which will reduce the current 23-hour journey to an 8-hour one. This section of China's high-speed rail network is expected to be ready by 2012.