High-speed route
TGV Est
Paris → Strasbourg · France
TGV Est in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 439 km
- Fastest time
- 1 h 46 min
- Average speed
- 248 km/h
- Top speed
- 320 km/h
- Operator
- SNCF Voyageurs
- Train
- TGV Euroduplex
- Countries
- France
- In service since
- 2007
- Runs
- roughly hourly
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Where a modified TGV hit 574.8 km/h in 2007: still the world rail speed record for steel wheels.
The LGV Est carries France’s fastest scheduled running, 320 km/h across the Champagne chalk, and holds a deeper claim to fame: a modified trainset on this line took the world rail speed record of 574.8 km/h in April 2007. Regular Euroduplexes leave Gare de l’Est and put Strasbourg an hour and three-quarters away, ducking the Vosges foothills through the Saverne tunnel before the cathedral’s single sandstone spire rises over the Alsace plain. Lorraine’s field-station at Meuse TGV, alone among the crops, is the line’s odd landmark.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 5920986 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 5 m from it
- Checked against the running timetable via ÖBB Scotty: our line sits 0.1 km from the shape of TGV 2363
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Champagne plains at record-line speed
- Meuse TGV — a station in the fields
- Moselle valley near Metz junction
- Saverne tunnel under the Vosges edge
- Strasbourg cathedral spire
More high-speed routes
- Eurostar
Drops 75 m below the sea through the 50.5 km Channel Tunnel, 37.9 km of it under the seabed, the longest undersea stretch of any rail tunnel.
Wikipedia ↗ - TGV inOui
France’s original 1981 LGV forms the first leg; today the TGV holds 320 km/h nearly all the way to the Mediterranean.
Wikipedia ↗ - AVE
Scheduled at 310 km/h, Europe’s fastest timetable, this line flipped one of the world’s busiest air routes to rail.
Wikipedia ↗ - AVE
Spain’s first AVE, built for Expo ’92 in standard gauge, the line that reset Spanish railways.
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More train routes in France.
Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Paris → Strasbourg · Strasbourg → Paris.