Malgudi Express: From the pages of RK Narayan to the railway tracks of Mysore. - Vageesh

FASTEST TRAINS : INDIA VS USA

I and Railfan SSK were on an RF trip this month, part of which included a ride on Acela, the fastest train of the US

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train had the following schedule for the 735km run with a top speed of 240kmph:

Boston 6:05
New York City 10:03
Washington DC 13:03

Given the similarity in timings (6AM to 1PM vs 6AM to 2PM) and distance (735kms vs 759 kms) for a fun comparative analysis, we recorded data for 22436 NDLS BSB Vande Bharat on a few of its runs and tried to see in real time on the day of our trip how does the fastest train of India "race" against the fastest train of the US

The most notable observation was :
Vande Bharat with an MPS of 130kmph covers the distance of 427 kms from NDLS to outer Kanpur (Panki Dham) on the 6 to 10 slot.
On nearly the exact same slot, Acela is able to reach from Boston to outer New York City (Harlem) while the distance here is 372 kms and the train touches 240 kmph on parts of this route

Now again, US isn't all that great when it comes to railways anyway, but I guess what this serves to prove is that just the "top speed" of trains don't play as much of a role in faster connectivity. Semi-high speed trains that are capable of hitting MPS for the majority of their routes can do just the same. Or maybe better.