- Maximum mileage in a single stretch: Chengdu – Beijing West (Train D318, 5-6 Feb 2011)
- Maximum speed travelled: Maglev, 431 km/h; HSR: 351 km/h (Train G7386, 1 Jun 2011)
- Maximum duration of single trip: 16 hours 59 minutes (Train K1124, 11-12 Jul 2011)
- Maximum cost of one single train ticket: CNY 2,085.— (Train D318, 5-6 Feb 2011)
With over 45,000 km on the railways since 2008 (earlier mileages are still being tallied), David Feng has been on the Chinese rails for a mileage which is the same as going around Planet Earth three times nonstop. His initial interest in the railways started when a one-hour commute between school and home in Switzerland meant his family forked out for him a one-year long Swiss GA travel pass, valid for unlimited travel. (That was at age 16.)
And why trains? David chose them in Switzerland because he was too young to be allowed behind a steering wheel at age 16. He got himself a driving licence at age 21 (he was eligible for one at 18 already), and stayed behind the Chinese wheels as train travel back then was a nightmare, with scammers and a haughty rail ministry stinking up the entire experience. That was until China’s entry into the HSR world on 1 August 2008, when speeds up to 350 km/h unseated him from his (now pretty dusty!) seat behind the wheel. Since “re-discovering” the CRH high speed train world, he’s given into the trains, after a terrible delay at Shanghai Pudong Airport (to the tune of 7-9 hours!).
David and wife, Tracy, are frequent train riders, and David blogs about ‘em trains pretty often at CNNgo. Visit David’s official blog and website to find out more about him.