Performance verification of korean tilting-train experimental and running-time estimation of its imaginary production version on the Gyeongbu line

In the future, railway has to play a more important role to encounter the increasing problems within the transport sector. For attracting more traffic into the railway, it is important for railway to improve the competitiveness with other modes, especially as regards travel time or schedule speed. Korea is a mountainous country, with as much as 70% of the area is covered by hills and mountains. This geography places constraints on the minimum radius of curvature for the rail network. So it was expected that the speed of trains could be enhanced on the existing railway network without a huge investment in infrastructure by using tilting trains. Running time for tilting train is one of the most important factors, with which will be done whether the commercialization of tilting train is needed or not. In this paper, we first evaluate the performance of the Korean tilting train experimental. And then the running time and time saving of future tilting train production version will be evaluated compared with 2012´s conventional trains and non-tilting trains, based on the Gyeongbu line. The running time for the tilting train on the Gyeongbu line (Seoul~Busan) is 4 hours 20 minutes, which is 31 minutes shorter than that of conventional train journey, which took 4 hours 51minutes. This decrease is separated into two effects. 14 minutes, 45%, of the total time saving is due to the enhanced dynamic capabilities of a train, which results from the diesel-powered trains to EMU trains. But on the other hand, the time saving benefit with tilting device is beyond 55% - 17 minutes - from reduced total running time.