How does a bullet train hurtling along at 200 mph stay glued to two thin steel rails with nothing holding it down? The answer is not the wheel flanges most people point to. It is the coned shape of the wheels themselves, a self-steering trick of geometry, plus the hunting oscillation that once capped train speed, banked superelevated curves, and some of the most precisely built track on Earth. Here is how high speed trains like the Japanese Shinkansen and the French TGV stay on the rails at speeds that should fling them into a field, and why their safety record is almost unbelievable.
We get into coned wheels and self-steering, why flanges are only a backup, how a rigid wheelset corners with no steering wheel, hunting oscillation and critical speed, yaw dampers and bogie design, continuous welded rail, curve radii and cant, crosswinds, and 60+ years of Shinkansen safety.
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