The TGV: at 317 kilometres per hour to Paris
9.4.2018
Translation: machine translated
No train in the world is as fast as the TGV. Travelling on the train that was once orange is a boy's dream. This has now come true.
The electric motors hum as I stand in front of the train that will take me to Paris. But as exciting as Paris may be, that's not the highlight of the journey. Because the trip on the TGV is a boyhood dream come true for me.
As a child, I had a habit of memorising things. Road signs, car brands, trains. Including the Shinkansen, which has a really long name, and the TGV. The picture in my book showed an orange train that was the fastest in Europe. Back in the 1980s. Europe was quite far away emotionally from eastern Switzerland back then, but Japan was even further.
Source: Railpictures.net / Ian Leech
I made a decision: I would travel by TGV.
I like trains
The years have passed, the boyhood dream has faded. But the fascination for trains remains. China Miéville's book "Railsea" is one of my favourites. In fact, I like the book so much that I work on a map of Railsea when I have the time and inclination.
In the novel, young Sham ap Soorap signs on to a Mole Train, a train that hunts giant moles on an endless sea of rails. The story is not coincidentally similar to Herman Melville's "Moby Dick". But the "Medes", the Mole Train on which Sham lives, appealed to me more than Melville's "Pequod". Because I like trains. No idea why. I even have a soundtrack for the book.
Source: Fanart von Leighton Johns
The snake-like machines with hundreds, if not thousands of people in their bellies are fascinating. The Bombardiers, Schindlers and Alstoms of the SBB, the Shinkansen, the metros of Barcelona and Toronto... and somewhere at the very top, the TGV.
I'm not someone who regularly follows trains, their development and all that stuff. But every year when SBB publishes its annual timetable, I take a look at the new routes and see where they've saved a few seconds. The golden tracks 31-34 at Zurich main station were a must-visit after the opening, but in everyday life I hardly notice the trains. I travel on the S-Bahn like thousands of commuters, get upset about three-minute delays and am happy about signal box faults in Effretikon.
But it's machines like the TGV that still amaze me, even after all these years of grown-up cynicism and detachment as well as the systematic demystification of everyday life.
In the belly of the snake
The journey starts at 07:34 in the morning. I board the TGV to Paris Gare de Lyon at Zurich Central Station with mixed feelings. Because the picture isn't quite right. The TGV Lyria, the latest model in the series, is no longer bright orange, but a dirty white colour. Pictures of tennis balls and the name "Stan" are stuck on the carriages and the locomotive. Commerce and the exploitation of naming rights do not stop at a boy's dream. What a pity. As good as Stan Wawrinka may be, I really don't want to see him on my TGV, on the train I've been dreaming of for almost exactly three decades.
The interior of the train is very different from what I had imagined. Where the commuter trains of the Zurich S-Bahn are cramped and uncomfortable, the TGV Lyria is quite something. The SNCF (Service Nationale de Chemins de Fer) train is designed for long journeys. The first class has wide seats and offers a surprising amount of legroom. This makes the four-hour journey from Zurich to Paris bearable. Someone who travelled on the train before me must have slept in their seat and drooled. You can still see the marks on my pillow.
The train departs. No jolting, no crunching in the train's joints. The TGV has power. The TGV POS model I'm sitting in has several locomotives in the formation, all of which are driving the train. The model name is somewhat unfortunate, as "POS" is the abbreviation for "Piece of Shit". For the TGV, however, it stands for "Paris-Eastern France-Southern Germany". Okay.
The fastest train in the world
The boy in me is happy because I learn all kinds of things about the train. The formation is 200 metres and 19 centimetres long, the two locomotives have a combined power of 12,900 hp, an incredible amount of power. What's more, the train I'm on is the fastest train in the world. Because TGV stands for Train à Grande Vitesse. In other words, "high-speed train". In German, the speed is usually "hoch", but for the French it is "groß".
The TGV doesn't break the speed record today, I know that. But the TGV POS was part of "Operation V150". The number in the name of the record attempt stands for the metres per second that the train should cover under ideal conditions. Between 15 January and 15 April 2007, the TGV was tested on a 140-kilometre route between Prény and Champagne-Ardenne. During this time, the train broke the record set by a TGV in 1990 several times. The top speed of the POS was 574 kilometres per hour.
After all, between Zurich and Paris, the maximum speed we can reach is 317 kilometres per hour. No train on the Swiss railway network can reach this speed. If I remember correctly, the fastest section of track in Switzerland is between Zurich and Bern, where trains travel at speeds of up to 200 kilometres per hour.
Shortly after the Swiss-French border, we set off. The train accelerates. It's not really noticeable, but I can hear the wind catching in the corners between the carriages and whistling against the outer wall of the train. The neighbourhood flies past the window. The steward serving me breakfast does nothing of the sort, but notices that we are reaching our maximum speed on this stretch of track. The train is getting faster and faster.
Then the speed rush is over. With croissants - avec ou sans chocolat - on the table in front of me, the train slows down. I don't know exactly how slow, because after the 317 kilometres per hour, even 200 seems slow. But France shows its face outside the window. Little houses built from old stones, meadows, forests.
"Ça y est! On is arriving. C'est la gare de Lyon?"
The journey from Zurich to Paris takes four hours and a few minutes. A pleasant four hours. Because when the wind isn't whistling, the 12,000 horsepower rolls almost comfortably through the countryside at over 100 kilometres per hour.
As we enter the Gare de Lyon in Paris, I remember my first French lesson. In the textbook "On y va", siblings Simone and François, with cousin René, are travelling to Paris. On entering the station, Simone asks, "Ça y est! On arrive. C'est la gare de Lyon?"
Source: zVg
Yes, this is the Gare de Lyon. I have arrived. The day is catching up with me. I have a press appointment to attend. But somehow my mood is indestructible, because after almost 30 years, I've done it: I've travelled by TGV.
A little addendum on the topic "On y va"
If you feel like I once did and you're wondering what happened to the protagonists of "On y va", then I have answers. Because even back then, when I was studying the book, rumours were swirling about the whereabouts of the three young people. I got to the bottom of it during my time at the St. Galler Tagblatt. And if you want to read the dialogue from the first lesson again, I typed it up for you. And I also dedicated a few lines to the probably most legendary sentence "Simone reste baba".
Source: zVg
The short version, for all those who don't want to read my old articles:
- René is an ophthalmologist in Zurich Oerlikon
- René's real name is Holger Schramm
- François was actually called Urs Hauser
- Urs Hauser died of cancer in 2005
- Simone was called Anita Rohrer
- Anita Rohrer died in 1991
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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