The TGV

[Thomas]

I was looking at the SNCF website yesterday, and I noticed that the French recently broke the high-speed on rail record, at like 357 mph or soemthing like that (574 km/h!!)

That's crazy fast...

[John Doe]

you can find video of this on youtube.

[Freddyben]

Yes indeed the new TGV is fast mostly because they managed to improve the various issues regarding the catenary and the braking and you sould see soon some of them in the USA because some big towns over there are quite interrested mostly because it's fast and pollution-free. There is a Japanese TGV that is even faster (far more) and it works on suspension system (no rails and no contact between the train and the ground) but it is not certified, so the best technology is basically the one made in France by Alstom.

[Thomas]

Yeah, I saw the video of it, it's so fast! It would be nice to have some good passenger trains in the US, we don't have enough trains at all, much less good ones. To be honest, I wouldn't even know how to get a train here...

I've seen the ones in Japan, too...I'm always very impressed by the lack of rails, with that much weight. But the Japanese are really good at what they do!

Why, oh why must the American mass-transit system suck so much

[charlotte]

hello !

i'm new in the forum, and my mission, for these year, is to speack and write a very good english before Xmas... Hope it will be not an impossible mission....

So; i answer about the tgv, it's on (in???) the actuality in France... (with the Tour de France!!!) the force of the sncf is completely cancelled by the fact of people who wants to buy a ticket (i speack for the new tgv, going in East!) can't do it, because the offer of the sncf is inferior (?) of the people's demand. It's very unbelievable, because a lot of people can't take the train, and have to wait for the ancient train, where you take three hours for only 50 miles! and I don't speack about the price of the tickets... A lot of people are angry about that, about the lack of the train per hour, and I understand them!!!!

(Thomas, could you say me where are my biggest faults in this short text.... construction or anything else.... it's very important for me, i want to live in new york city!)

[Thomas]

Welcome to the forum, charlotte!

Your mistakes are mainly vocabulary-related. The word "speak" doesn't have a c, and you should say the "old train" instead of the "ancient train" -- the word ancient means really really really old in English; the Egyptians are ancient, for example. Just little things like that, mostly.