02-09-2019, 07:44 AM
I'm in China right now, and thought I'd share my experience with high speed rail so far.
We wanted to travel from Beijing to Xi'an (about 900 km, similar to Windsor to Québec). We booked our tickets one day ahead, and about half the trips still had seats available.
The morning of our trip, we arrived at the train station about an hour early, since we needed to book tickets for the return trip and had forgotten to get them earlier. (One of the first differences you notice entering a Chinese train station is the security presence. There are usually a few mobile police stations outside, and to enter the station there is a checkpoint with a metal detector and bag scanner. These checkpoints are very fast, so not much of a delay.) Once we had our return trip tickets, we went into the main station, found the waiting room for our platform and took a seat there.
About 15 minutes before the train was scheduled to depart, staff started checking people's tickets and letting them on to the platform. (Controlling access to and from the platforms means there is no need for ticket inspections on the train, and seems much more reliable than random checks for preventing fare evasion.)
By the time we got onto the platform, the train was already there. The train we were taking was a Fuxing, which have fairly comfortable seats. The pitch is 1 metre so there was plenty of legroom, but the seat back was clearly designed for someone a bit shorter than me.
We departed on scheduled and were soon crossing at 309 km/h. The track we were on was elevated almost the entire way with only a few station approaches at grade, and a few short tunnels in hillier areas. There were some parallel viaducts being built so I was able to see their construction method. The towers are cast in place, then precast spans are lifted by a crane and bolted into place. It looked like the other track for the return trains was all embedded track, but some other tracks were concrete sleepers in ballast, so that might have been a coincidence.
We stopped at 2 stations along the way before arriving in Xi'an four and a half hours after leaving Beijing. After disembarking, we had to pass through a ticket check to ensure no one had ridden past where there ticket was for. We then headed down to the attached subway station, (through another security checkpoint,) and took a subway to our hotel.
Returning, we weren't able to get express tickets, so we ended up on a train that took about 6:30 and stopped at about 10 stations on the way. Other than that, the trip was about the same but in the opposite direction.
We wanted to travel from Beijing to Xi'an (about 900 km, similar to Windsor to Québec). We booked our tickets one day ahead, and about half the trips still had seats available.
The morning of our trip, we arrived at the train station about an hour early, since we needed to book tickets for the return trip and had forgotten to get them earlier. (One of the first differences you notice entering a Chinese train station is the security presence. There are usually a few mobile police stations outside, and to enter the station there is a checkpoint with a metal detector and bag scanner. These checkpoints are very fast, so not much of a delay.) Once we had our return trip tickets, we went into the main station, found the waiting room for our platform and took a seat there.
About 15 minutes before the train was scheduled to depart, staff started checking people's tickets and letting them on to the platform. (Controlling access to and from the platforms means there is no need for ticket inspections on the train, and seems much more reliable than random checks for preventing fare evasion.)
By the time we got onto the platform, the train was already there. The train we were taking was a Fuxing, which have fairly comfortable seats. The pitch is 1 metre so there was plenty of legroom, but the seat back was clearly designed for someone a bit shorter than me.
We departed on scheduled and were soon crossing at 309 km/h. The track we were on was elevated almost the entire way with only a few station approaches at grade, and a few short tunnels in hillier areas. There were some parallel viaducts being built so I was able to see their construction method. The towers are cast in place, then precast spans are lifted by a crane and bolted into place. It looked like the other track for the return trains was all embedded track, but some other tracks were concrete sleepers in ballast, so that might have been a coincidence.
We stopped at 2 stations along the way before arriving in Xi'an four and a half hours after leaving Beijing. After disembarking, we had to pass through a ticket check to ensure no one had ridden past where there ticket was for. We then headed down to the attached subway station, (through another security checkpoint,) and took a subway to our hotel.
Returning, we weren't able to get express tickets, so we ended up on a train that took about 6:30 and stopped at about 10 stations on the way. Other than that, the trip was about the same but in the opposite direction.