SOUTH KOREA: Korail put its latest generation of high speed train into commercial service on May 1.
Two eight-car KTX-CheongRyong trainsets are now diagrammed to operate on the Gyeongbu high speed line and on the Honam line, offering passengers journey times of 2 h 17 min from Seoul to Busan and of 1 h 36 min from Yongsan to Gwangju Songjeong.
The two pre-series trainsets will be followed by 17 series-built units, with the full fleet delivered to Korail by 2027-28. Built by Hyundai Rotem in Changwon, the first complete KTX-CheongRyong trainset had been presented to President Yoon Suk Yeol in Daejeon on April 1, a date marking 20 years of KTX services between Seoul and Busan.
Derived from the HEMU-430X experimental trainset which also served as the basis for Korail’s 260 km/h KTX-EUM trainsets, KTX-CheongRyong has been named after the Year of the Blue Dragon, Cheong meaning blue and Ryong meaning dragon. The trains are finished in a deep blue and gold livery which Korail says is ’reminiscent of the mythical blue dragon’.
Distinguished from earlier builds of Korean high speed train by having distributed power, as with the KTX-EUM units, each KTX-CheongRyong set has six motored cars and two end trailers. A speed of 300 km/h can be reached in 3 min 32 sec, which Korail says is 1 min 44 sec faster than with a KTX-Sancheon trainset.
The trains will be limited to 300 km/h pending completion of quadruple tracking between Pyeongtaek and Osong by 2028, after which they will be able to exploit their maximum speed of 320 km/h, as reflected in their initial designation of EMU-320.
A KTX-CheongRyong sets offers 515 seats, compared with 379 for a KTX-Sancheon trainset and 410 for a KTX-Sancheon II unit. One car in a 199∙1 m long sets offers 46 seats in Superior class. Despite the higher capacity, Korail says that the trains offer wider interiors and more space between seats.
Each row of seats has its own window, and passengers have access to 220 V power sockets, wireless chargers, and USB ports; TV screens in each car have a width of 21∙5 inches. The entrance steps in each car can be adjusted to match platform heights.
The power car bodyshells are fabricated from aluminium, allowing an axleload of 15 tonnes compared with 17 tonnes for a steel-bodied car.
A fleet of 14 similar EMU-320 trainsets is due to be delivered to private operator Supreme Railways between May 2027 and February 2028.
