Distance: 30 km, journey time 7 minutes, max speed 431km/h (268 mph)

Well here we go for the last train of this trip – but one seemingly without rails!
It’s a 20 minute taxi ride from the Bund to Longyang Road, where the downtown Maglev station is to be found. A short hike up an escalator, then you buy a ticket (mine was a first class or “VIP” ticket, one way, discounted if you show your flight ticket, RMB 80 or £8). Cheaper seats further back are maybe RMB 40…

The trains depart every 15 minutes and take just 7 minutes to reach Pudong International Airport.
Once I had stowed my baggage, I wandered forward to the cockpit door, which you can look through to see “the driver”. I must say it was a bit of a “Wizzard of Oz” moment, as the pilot of this train was a wearing a hoody and looked like he was working hard to improve his score on Mortal Kombat rather than preparing to take responsibility for my life on an ultra high speed rail line.

After about five minutes he finished his game, sat bolt upright, adjusted his seat and hit some buttons – the doors closed, the train levitated, and we shot off towards the airport at warp speed.

I watched the speed indicator as we accelerated up to my previous speed record from the high speed “G train” I took from Beijing last week – 300 km/h. Things start really flashing past, and this train has banked corners, so you feel a little bit more G force. But it kept on accelerating. I watched it cross 400 km/h and within a couple of minutes we had topped out at 430 km/h – briefly I was the fastest 1st class train passenger (an otherwise empty VIP class) on Planet Earth!

At this speed the outside world really is a bit of a whirl. Anyway, it didn’t last too long before we edged back to 300 km/h, and quickly we arrived at the airport. I learned from my concierge at the hotel that between 9.00 and 11.00 in the morning the train reaches its top speed, but later in the day it’s about 50 seconds slower on the run, to save power apparently..

I found Pudong Airport a bit like Heathrow – not very friendly to a transferring passenger carrying baggage, but was pleased I had done this trip rather than take a taxi the whole way. As many say, it’s a bit of a shame this line does not go all the way into the city, but its still well worth using.

So there we go, a 12,490 km journey over three weeks which I would definitely commend to you. I hope you have enjoyed my posts and found them informative, especially if you are considering doing this trip yourself. I also hope you have found them amusing if you are not planning to do this trip, but know me, and were perhaps hoping I might get detained in a gulag!

I have tried hard to present my experiences in an honest and straightforward way – it’s a journey that needs a fair amount of planning to work through the red tape, but once on the rails, a real adventure. It’s not hard, but does need one to remain open minded and live in the moment of the biggest train trip out there.

I will not be posting further on my continuing travels in Asia, as they don’t employ the train, the subject of this blog. I will however post more on kit reviews and image galleries whilst its all fresh in my mind.

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I apologise if I have misled you with the name of this post, as it refers to the nickname for the Shanghai World Financial Centre (SWFC) rather than any beer drinking paraphernalia. You can understand why when you see the design of this building (above centre) by the architect Kohn Pederson Fox.

Last night I could feel my hotel (the Pudong Shangri-La) vibrate slightly in the strong gusts of wind. When I spoke to the concierge at breakfast, he said that this is normal, and that’s why there are no lights hanging off the ceiling, as guests would see them sway! I’m only on the 22nd floor of this hotel, but this morning I ventured out onto the skybridge on the 100th floor of currently the World’s tallest (roof & occupied) building – the SWFC.

Finished in 2008, it was once the third tallest in the world, and is next to two other super high buildings, making this currently the tallest cluster of buildings in the World.

For 150 RMB (£15) you get to take an elevator up to the 94th floor, an escalator to the 97th floor and then a lift to the “skybridge” on the 100th floor at 474m. Did I mention that I have a fear of heights and a crushing fear of falling from heights? I must be mad to take on this assignment..

I discovered that I was fine on the relatively solid feeling 94th floor, but knowing that on the 100th floor all that was beneath you were some thick glass tiles made my knees wobble, and I had to cross mostly without looking down. I was able to grab hold of a railing and take this picture, but it wasn’t the most relaxed I have ever taken! I was in fact quite relieved to get back down to ground level.

Shanghai seems to be a great blend of tall and ultra modern, as well as low rise and traditional – it gave me a bit of a “Bladerunner” feel, as does my next port of call, Hong Kong.

I was originally going to take an overnight train to Hong Kong, but I must confess that I’m flying. The reason is a bit sad and domestic. On my journey so far I have been able to “buy out” my own compartment at night, giving me the necessary privacy and space. My Chinese train agent was not prepared to try and do this for me on this route, wanting passport numbers for each berth, so I gave up in the end. That might seem a bit defeatist, but after all the other planning done for the trip, I just decided to officially end the train journey in Shanghai and travel by plane.

With hindsight an overland journey from Beijing to Bangkok or Shanghai to Singapore would be a good advanced level train travel test, and maybe one I will do in the future – it has a mix of visa, border and timetable complexities that six months ago I might of not imagined I could take on, but now I feel I quite fancy the challenge of!

So I am now packing for tomorrow – the Maglev trip to the airport, and – yikes – a 20kg luggage allowance on my cheapy plane ticket. I shall have to adopt the uniform Chinese approach of trying to carry everything on as hand luggage..

Bye for now.

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G15 High Speed Train, Beijing South – Shanghai Hongqiao

Sad to be leaving the Kerry, but up early for my journey to Shanghai. In the Shangri-La way, everything was a whir of efficiency at check out and I was soon deposited in a wifi enabled car and accompanied by Chris, the hotel concierge. I discovered on the short journey to the station that this blog is actually blocked in China, but the hotel route their internet via Hong Kong, so as a result I have had no problems posting. I hasten to add that I think it is Blogger that is banned, not my posts..

Beijing South is an impressive building (and the biggest train station in China) but yet so much easier to use than the sprawling Beijing Central station. I actually didn’t need the interpreter services of Chris at all – it was more clearly signed than most British airports!

The investment and scale of the high speed rail network in China is amazing. On Tuesday this week they opened the new line from Beijing to Canton, cutting the journey time from 20 hours to just 8 hours. The line to Shanghai is similarly fast, covering over 1300 km in just 4 hours 45 minutes. The Trans-Siberian covered on average 1100 km per 24 hours!

The G train that I travelled on had three classes – second class, first class and business class (the most expensive). If you travel in business class you get the “VIP” service package – lounge, food etc.

The system at the station is that after going through a speedy security check as you enter the main station, there are a series of airport style gates for each train. These open 20-30 minutes before departure, and you show your ticket on entry (they didn’t ask to see my passport, but it’s number appears on my ticket).

I think the station reminds me of an enormous version Stansted Airport (for all the right design reasons) and hope Sir Norman Foster would not be offended – i.e. you only have to walk about 100m forwards from entering the concourse to getting down onto the platform for your train, real functionality.

After being left in the VIP lounge for an hour or so my porter collected me and fast tracked me to the front of a big queue. We took the lift down to the platform where he sped ahead to the very end of the train and deposited me in the sightseeing/quiet/VIP cabin – more the feel of a Gulfstream 4 than a train, with just five seats. There is so much leg room here that all my bags are in front of my seat and I can’t reach them with my legs. It reclines into a full flat bed and has a TV monitor (which I didn’t try or see anyone else using).

Having heard about the sad passing of Gerry Anderson this week, the design of the inside of the cabin also reminded me of an Eagle from “Space 1999”- Look at the proportions of the window and the curve of the wall.. It would be nice to think that the designer was inspired by futuristic kids television!

I popped out to take a few quick snaps, then I waited in my chair watching the LED panel ticking down the time to blast off. I was slightly alarmed that the pilot had not arrived at T-5 (he has to get in via the cabin) when it dawned on me that I was sat at the back of the train and not the front – Beijing South is not a terminus. So at 10.57 the doors slid closed and with the gentle whir of motors, three minutes early, we eased out of the station. The first few kilometres were a reduced speed, but within 10 minutes we were accelerating up to 300km/h and beyond. It was unnervingly smooth.

I spent some time in the main business cabin, where I chose to have my lunch (seat 4F). There were just 12 seats here – it was a bit brighter, wider and more open than the “rocket style” of the nose section, with three seats across. Both are very nice places to be.

Lunch was simple but tasty. There was no choice, it was a beef and duck medley with noodle soup. No tea or coffee, just water or Coke.

As a recently fully trained Trans-Sib survivor, I noticed that there was the modern equivalent of a samovar at the end of first class, so no problem if you bring your own noodles. Here’s a picture of first class, which looked quite popular.

I had thought that the train was a non stop service, but in fact we stopped briefly at Jinan West and later Nanjing South. The trip is so fast that you watch the outside temperature rise as you travel south. I let countryside the flash past to a soundtrack of “The Very Best of Japan”, which seemed to fit the surroundings rather well.

If you are thinking of buying a ticket for this part of my journey, a few notes that you might want to run through –

1) As I understand it, some trains don’t have a full business class, just first class seats for premium passengers. It’s worth making sure your ticket fare looks like the right one. Mine cost 1700 RMB (about £170) + service charge from ChinaTicketsNet. I ordered it before I left home and it was delivered by courier to my hotel in Beijing without any difficulty.

2) Some trains (the ones with no separate business class carriage) have a very small number of seats that are the same as business class but right at the front of the train (like my seat) with an opaque view into “the cockpit”. These are sometimes called “VIP” or “sightseeing” class, but it confuses the system described above, as they are also treated as business class on trains that have a business class cabin. I think its about half of all the trains – its easy to spot because there is no business class fare available on that train from the ticket agent eg ChinaTicketsNet.

My conclusion is that you will unlikely to be able to buy “sightseeing” or “VIP” seats on trains even with business class fares available, as the agents don’t sell “sightseeing class” as a separate product (probably owing to all the confusion and the small number of seats). I would add that the normal business class carriage is nearly identical, so no real need to worry about all this..

3) My business class ticket, by chance, allocated me a seat in a sightseeing section at the very end of the train, in a business class carriage (carriage 16, Richard Burton style – seat 1A) – there are only five seats, and I note one pair are placed together as a sort of love seat with no armrest in the middle 2A/B. A bit scary if you had to share that with someone that you didn’t know!

It’s all a little bit confusing, so I hope that’s clear!

We arrived on time into a misty murky Shanghai Hongquai that is on the same scale as Beijing South – modern and massive! I’m stopping in Shanghai for a couple of days now – my final leg, only 30km, but the fastest 30km currently possible by train on Earth, is on New Year’s Eve – the Maglev.

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