TGV

TGV is France's train à grande vitesse; literally "high speed train".

Rough overview:

• Top commercial speed: 300 km/h
• Top test speed: 515.3 km/h (1990 record)
• Operated by the SNCF.
• Built by Alstom's Transport Sector
• Current high-speed network runs to Marseille, Tours, Brussels and the Channel tunnel.
• Extensions to the network of high-speed lines: Turin; London; Perpignan and thence Spain; Strasbourg; Amsterdam, Cologne (the Thalys network)
• Start of the project in the 1960s
• Impact of French society: towns such as Chartres are becoming "TGV commuter belt"; Brussels - Paris in 90 minutes has increased commuting between the two capitals; likewise Paris - Marseille time greatly reduced recently
• Impact of the building of the lines: many years of wrangles over the Lyon-Marseille line

See also: Transportation in France, Eurostar train, High speed rail.

External links

• 'TGV web', a site with a lot of information: http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/tgv/tgvindex.html
• The history of the TGV (brief): http://www.ecsel.psu.edu/~dbieryla/highspeed/history.html
• TGV - The French High-speed Train Service (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A711785) at H2G2