Eric Pieczak

The TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, French for "High-Speed Train") holds a series of land speed records for rail vehicles achieved by SNCF, the French national railway, and its industrial partners. The high-speed trials are intended to expand the limits of high-speed rail technology, increasing speed and comfort without compromising safety.

The current TGV world speed record is 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph), achieved on 3 April 2007 on the new LGV Est.

The TGV 001 was an experimental gas turbine-electric locomotive-powered trainset built by Alstom to break speed records between 250–300 kilometres per hour. It was the first TGV prototype and was commissioned in 1969, to begin testing in 1972. It achieved a top speed of 318 kilometres per hour (198 mph) on 8 December 1972.

Operation TGV 100, referring to a target speed of 100 metres per second (360 km/h, 224 mph), took place on 26 February 1981 shortly before the opening of the LGV Sud-Est and ended with a speed record of 380 km/h (236 mph) set by TGV Sud-Est trainset number 16.

Operations TGV 117 and TGV 140, referring to target speeds in metres per second, were carried out by SNCF from November 1989 to May 1990. The culmination of these test programs was a new world speed record of 515.3 km/h (143.1 m/s or 320.3 mph), set on 18 May 1990.

The record runs took place in two separate campaigns, separated by a period of modifications to trainset 325. For each day of testing, the 325 was towed to the test site by TGV Atlantique trainset 308 because its 1500 V DC systems had been removed, preventing operations near Paris. Trainset 308 also performed a sweep of the test track at 350 km/h before each high-speed run.

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Wikipedia