Moscow – the implementation of St. The St. Petersburg High-Speed Railway (HSR) project continues. It is recommended that there will be time to complete all the work before spring 2028, when commercial passenger traffic is planned to start, so it is now necessary to carry out partial tests of the various systems of the future line.
Image source: Russian Railways News Agency.
To this end, testing of the first test section of the high-speed railway between Sablino and Tosno in the Leningrad region has begun, with a total length of about one and a half kilometers. Since there are currently no trains capable of traveling along this route at speeds up to 400 km/h, the current relatively high-speed train “Sapsan”, which has long connected the physical and cultural capital of Russia, was chosen as a test vehicle.
how notes According to the press service of Russian Railways, the test infrastructure itself includes numerous sensors, and an additional 35 systems for receiving and transmitting readings are installed directly on the train. As part of the testing, engineers inspect the rails themselves and the loads on the trains.
Testing under near-real conditions is planned to begin at the end of 2027. By then, mature high-speed trains (at least single trains) should have been built. At the initial stage, in general, no more is needed: considering that the travel time between Moscow and St. Petersburg at this speed is about 2 hours and 15 minutes, a string of train “sausages” does not seem to be needed.