How It Works-Amazing Vehicles

In the 159 years since EIR-21 and EIR-22 were built,

Britain has had six different monarchs

The Orient Express took 60 hours to travel the

3,000km (1,864mi) between Paris and Istanbul

© A lamy; Sol90; Think stock; Peters & Zabransk y; Dreamstime

It would take Usain Bolt at least two minutes and 11

seconds to run the length of the Gorakhpur platform

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More people use the Shinjuku Station every day than

live in the country of Latvia

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ON THE

MAP

The world’s

longest railways

1 Trans-Siberian

Railway

2 Orient Express

3 High-speed

Shanghai to

Guangzhou

4 Texas Eagle Chicago

to LA

5 Toronto to Vancouver

6 Perth to Sydney

1

2

3

5

4

4

In October 2013, work was completed on the longest

train platform in the world. It measures a vast 1,366

metres (4,482 feet) and spans the length of the

Gorakhpur railway station in India. When they built

the station, they made sure they had the world’s

longest platform, eclipsing the previous record,

which also happened to belong to a train station in

India, by 294 metres (965 feet).

If you’re asked to name a train, you’ll probably either

say Thomas the Tank Engine or the Orient Express. As

one is fi ctional, we’ll focus on the one that travelled

between Paris and Istanbul for 94 years, before being

discontinued in 1977. It had four sleeping cars, each of

which held ten compartments for snoozing in. It wasn’t

a technological marvel, but its romantic mystique kept

it chugging away for the best part of a century.

Built by the UK-based Kitson, Thompson & Hewitson

in 1855, the EIR-21 and EIR-22 steam locomotives are

still running, transporting passengers between the

cities of Alwar and New Delhi in India. Weighing in at a

hefty 26 tons, each train can deliver 97 kilowatts (130

horsepower) and can reach 40 kilometres (25 miles)

per hour. That’s not bad for an almost 160-year duo of

steam locomotives...

The world’s longest

station platform

The world’s most

famous train

The world’s oldest

working train

The Shinjuku Station in Tokyo is the world’s busiest

station, seeing an astonishing 3.64 million passengers

board trains every day. There are 200 exits at the

station in order to serve the huge numbers of people

that come through its doors daily. A train arrives at

one of its platforms every three seconds on average.

The most popular line by far is the JR line, which takes

nearly half the passengers who use the station.

The world’s busiest

train station

DID YOU KNOW? The USA has the longest rail network in the world, but no trains that qualify as high-speed ones