Since my husband's research area is high speed trains, we've taken a ride on a number of trains. As an 'army brat' growing up in Canada - I travelled across the country by rail and can't count the times that I've travelled between Montreal and Toronto over the years. During 6 mths in Japan (thanks to funding from Japan Rail) we rode the Shinkansen and it's high speed 'cousins' many times (including a ride in the driver's seat of the fastest, Nozumi) as well as almost every local train we could find.

We've gone to various international rail conferences where we've had the opportunity to check out a number of new train sets - either just in a walk-on visit or actually testing them. We've sat in the HSST maglev on its test track in Japan but, sadly, it wasn't operational at the time.

My biggest thrill was the fun of riding a Transrapid maglev on the test track at Emsland in Germany (reaching a speed over 420 km/hr). That same train is now operating from Pudong airport into Shanghai.

Cheers! Judy in (rainy) Hong Kong