Train Buff’s Dream: Riding the Rails to Paris at 186 M.P.H.

It was a boyhood dream come true.

I was about to board France’s TGV, the 186-m.p.h. Train a Grande Vitesse, in the town of Rennes on March 17, when I was told that I would be sitting in the front cab, next to the engineer.

The sleek, low-slung train looked like a high-tech version of the giant worm described in the science fiction novel “Dune.”

All those days and nights in my youth spent playing around with an American Flyer train set--complete with tunnels my father built from wire, plaster and papier-mache--replayed in my mind.

This included, of course, those times when I opened the throttle on my electric transformer too far and sent my train careening around sharp curves into telephone poles, billboards and even an occasional passenger depot.

Brrrng! With the sound of a school bell, which is the authorization to depart, TGV engineer Georges Beuve, a 28-year veteran of the French National Railroad, turned what looked like a steering wheel to increase the amount of electricity going from an overhead power line above the tracks into the train’s all-electric motors.

The engines answered with a whine reminiscent of “Star Trek’s” starship Enterprise, only we were still earthbound. We glided out of the station and, within a minute or two, were traveling at more than 100 m.p.h.

I was aboard the TGV as part of a tour by Orange County officials and business executives who had come to Europe to compare the French technology of steel wheels on a steel track with a train magnetically levitated without friction at a test track in Emsland, West Germany. The California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission hopes to select one of the two technologies later this year for a proposed Anaheim-Las Vegas route.

The sun-bleached town of Rennes, dotted with orange-tiled roofs, rapidly shrank behind us. Ahead, poles, trees and farms swished by in an endless blur. Another TGV approached us on the next track and looked as if it would hit us head-on. We were on a stretch of older tracks, and multiple steel rails seemed to weave through each other, crisscrossing several times. There was much more swaying in the cab than in the passenger compartments, in which I had earlier ridden from Paris to Rennes.

Denis A. Doute, a French train consultant accompanying me, tried to be reassuring. Some of these crisscrosses can handle the TGV at very high speeds without a derailing, he said.

The TGV’s cab resembles an airplane cockpit but with fewer lights and dials. One light indicates what the last safety switch we passed over indicated about the condition of the track. Another indicates whether it’s safe ahead and is backed up by a system of bells and buzzers. A small computer screen provides speed, time and other data, with analog backups, all right in front of the engineer. There’s also a lever for the horn, a radio-telephone and a microphone.

Behind us, a mainframe computer forms part of the cabin’s rear wall, monitoring the train’s performance and automating most of its operations. Attached to it, in the engine compartment behind us, is the “black box,” which records performance data for evaluation later.

Both the engineer and I sat on chair-stools facing the dashboard.

As we hit a stretch of new track, under which is concrete instead of wooden ties, Beuve turned the wheel again to get more power. We hit 186 m.p.h. This is the maximum speed allowed by TGV officials, although they say the train can go much faster.

We raised our voices slightly to be heard. Cows grazed on nearby fields, not lifting a head in response to the noise. They rushed by like videotape on fast forward.

If only my father -- and the guys back in my office -- could see me now!

Cars on a nearby highway seemed to be in first gear. This felt strange. In Southern California, cars frequently overtake Amtrak trains I ride.

Suddenly, without warning, the engines whined down. We rapidly lost speed. Normally this happens when the engineer coasts to save power or wants to avoid braking, which saves on maintenance costs. Beuve is trained to cut power at just the right times to ensure that the train will come to rest at the right spots without braking.

But now something was wrong.

“We have lost all power,” Beuve announced calmly in French. “There is no electricity in the overhead line.”

He kept one hand on the power wheel while fiddling with the ignition switch. A fail-safe device requires that he touch the power wheel or floor pedals every so often, or else the train automatically brakes to a stop.

A national railroad inspector also riding with us in the cab showed no sign of panic, either. He simply asked Beuve a few technical questions.

After a few minutes of coasting, the motors kicked in again. Beuve learned from a radio message that another TGV train traveling about six miles behind had come onto the same electrical power grid, overtaxing an older power station.

Slamming through the countryside at 186 m.p.h. again, suddenly there was a loud thump on the front windshield.

“A bird,” Beuve said in French.

Doute said birds used to be a big problem but “most of them are smarter now. They have learned to stay away.”

Another TGV approached head-on, my stomach turning as it seemed to come within inches of hitting us.

The train’s windshield has a yellow stripe painted across the top, like the tinting on auto windshields, to help railroad workers see the train before it strikes them, Doute said. The train is painted a silvery gray and blue and fades into the background horizon easily. By the time someone hears it coming, it’s too late.

Entering a tunnel, it became pitch-black. The train has no headlights. I felt as if we were hurtling inside Disneyland’s Space Mountain.

Suddenly, a tiny dot of light ahead exploded into sunlight at the tunnel’s end. My ears popped.

We passed under a bridge. Doute said it was made of wood to please environmentalists. “They think the animals around here will like the wood better,” he said.

Another bridge was topped by electrified fencing to keep vandals away, although Doute said damage from vandalism is not frequent.

One TGV engineer was killed, he said, when someone once hung a large rock over the side of the bridge, right at the height of the train’s windshield.

As we approached Montparnasse station in Paris, the train slowed gradually, and we passed a series of sound walls in different shapes that bounce noise at many different angles.

Doute pointed out that we had reached Paris in two hours, even though we had to slow down for the last few miles through the Paris suburbs.

“It’s the network effect,” Doute said. “We use old tracks for part of the trip but still gain a lot of time by traveling faster on the other section. . . . We have a saying that you don’t have to go as fast as you can to attract passengers, but only as fast as necessary.”

The TGV Atlantique train quietly came to rest at exactly the right spot on the passenger platform. Beuve, the engineer, picked up a black briefcase and, wearing a light jacket, climbed backward down the steps.

“Au revoir,” he said, before disappearing into the warm, hazy Parisian afternoon.