Superlatives
Every guideway has a limit — a speed it can't beat, a slope it can't cling to, a depth it won't go below. This page collects the current record-holders across every kind of fixed track: fastest, steepest, longest, highest. Each figure is a moving target, so treat these as the standings, not the final score.
Fastest
The outright record belongs to Japan's L0 Series superconducting maglev, which hit 603 km/h (375 mph) with 49 people aboard on the Yamanashi test line on 21 April 2015 — still the fastest a crewed train has ever gone. Take away levitation and the ceiling drops: the fastest a steel wheel has managed on rails is 574.8 km/h (357 mph), set by a stripped-down French TGV (the V150 set) on the LGV Est on 3 April 2007. Both were one-off test runs. In everyday commercial service the crown stays with the Shanghai Maglev (Transrapid), which peaks at 431 km/h on its 30 km airport dash — though since 2021 it only reaches that in two short daily windows and otherwise cruises at 300 km/h.
Steepest
Steepness splits by how a vehicle grips the track:
- Funicular — cable-hauled cars on a slope. The record is the Stoosbahn in Switzerland at a 110% gradient (a 47.7° pitch), its barrel-shaped cabins rotating to keep floors level as it climbs 744 m.
- Rack railway — biting a toothed centre rail. Nothing beats the Pilatus Railway, also Swiss, at 48%; its Locher rack turns the teeth sideways so the cogs can't climb out under load.
- Pure adhesion — plain wheel-on-rail friction, no cable, no rack. This tops out far lower: the steepest is a 13.8% (1-in-7.2) pitch on the Calçada de São Francisco, part of Lisbon's tram line 28.
Longest & deepest tunnel
The world's longest railway tunnel is Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel at 57.09 km, opened in 2016; it is also the deepest, running up to 2,450 m below the mountains. That's a land record — the longest stretch of railway under water belongs to the Channel Tunnel, whose 50.5 km bore includes 37.9 km beneath the seabed, the longest undersea section of any tunnel anywhere.
Highest
For altitude no track climbs higher than China's Qinghai–Tibet railway. Its summit at Tanggula Pass reaches 5,072 m above sea level, and the nearby Tanggula station, at 5,068 m, is the highest railway station on Earth — high enough that the carriages carry supplemental oxygen.
Highest & longest ropeway
Leave the ground and the records move to cable. The highest passenger ropeway is generally credited to Venezuela's Mérida cable car, whose top station on Pico Espejo sits at 4,765 m (China's Dagu Glacier gondola, near 4,843 m, is a rival claim). The longest single cable-car ride is Vietnam's Hon Thom Cable Car in Phú Quốc at 7,899 m — nearly eight kilometres of three-rope span from station to station.
Longest single span
The most striking rope record is the longest unsupported span — the distance a cable crosses between two towers with nothing holding it up in between. Germany's Seilbahn Zugspitze stretches 3,213 m in a single leap, a mark set when it opened in 2017; it took the record from Canada's Peak 2 Peak Gondola in Whistler, which spans 3,024 m.