[Busy Bee]

The specifications for CHSR rolling stock has been established for some time as it was required to be known for even preliminary engineering of structures and track geometry. CHSR will not be using bilevel, Duplex-style rolling stock as used on some TGV routes. A single level train is what is called for. I have read about the 800 foot platform detail but am not sure how finalized that is and to the best of my knowledge there is not specification in the engineering doc's that specifically identify how long the planned rake of cars will be. I too hope they do not pigeon hole themselves into capacity and scheduling conflicts by cutting corners with platform lenghth. Perhaps engineering is accommodating the flexibility of future platform lengthening as demand warrants. This I have no knowledge of. It is important to remember though that a 1600' rake is an outlier. With the exception of the Eurostar, as far as I know the only other HSR consists of this length are when two separate trains are coupled together (proper term?) while sharing a specific leg of the journey. I believe this occurs frequently on certain trunk line segments in Germany and France, I also believe it is practiced in Japan, though I am not sure. Regardless, this practice wouldn't be necessary on CHSR anyways, so it was unlikely one would expect trains of that length planned or engineered for. For example, a 1600' rake would be something in the order of 20 passenger coaches with two power cars. I'm not convinced such single train capacity is even remotely warranted.