An expansion of SNCF's Euroduplex fleet

Some fabulous news!  SNCF has signed a contract expanding its Euroduplex fleet!  Some people accuse the French government of protectionism, given that SNCF only buys its high-speed trains from Alstom (a French manufacturer), but I say this is reflective of the fact that not only are we French the only people who know how to do café culture, fats, portion sizes, bottled water and a whole host of other things, we are also the only people who know how to do trains.

As mentioned in the article, the Euroduplex sets are already in use on the Paris-Luxembourg and Paris-Strasbourg-Stuttgart-Munich routes and will be introduced on the Paris-Zürich and Paris-Barcelona routes.  Some people say that the double decker TGVs are cheap and cheerful, rather than sophisticated.  I would counter by saying that we French are good at making high-speed trains a mass-market product and if only the crème-de-la-crème of French society could afford to travel by train (as is the case in many other nations less competent at running railway systems), we French women would probably be forced into our cars to get around and we would then have to work harder to maintain our impossibly dainty and thin figures on account of walking less.  Besides, though we French have car manufacturers (I think I recall hearing that Peugeot was the first manufacturer to produce a diesel hybrid car, the 3008), I think travelling by car is a symbol of American indulgence and obesity, rather than French dainty figures, so I try and travel by train where practical.

I am very thankful that London-Paris and Paris-Marseille became major high-speed train corridors relatively early on.  How else would I have been able to return to Paris at weekends and Marseille on anything longer without getting on a plane when I was building my career in London.  London-Paris is approximately 450km and Paris-Marseille is approximately 750km.

I know I said it is unladylike for a lady to be a gricer, but since my daddy is an engineer who works for SNCF, trains have been a major part of family life and I have accumulated some understanding of rolling stock as a result, I thought I would give some technical reasons why the double-deck TGV sets (of various types) help cement France as being perfect in just about everything, including trains: -
1)  Some people think it is a step into the future if a train has the electric multiple unit configuration.  I would counter by pointing out the fact that the locomotive configuration makes the trains much quieter inside, given that you can't hear the traction equipment underneath your feet.
2)  The small number of motors in these Euroduplex sets helps keep the maintenance costs down.  Though I am very sophisticated with my lifestyle, I cannot boast about French women as a whole being sophisticated if their sophisticated ways are not mass-market solutions that permeate the whole of French society.
3)  The sets have an enormous capacity.  As far as I am aware, all the Euroduplex sets have capacities above 500 people.  Again, this helps keep the costs down and makes them a mass-market solution.
4)  The articulated nature reduces the power-weight ratio of the trains, meaning that you can get the same acceleration and speed performance with fewer motors: - again, this keeps the cost down.
5)  The articulated nature of the train means that the main area where vibrations occur is in the transitional area between one carriage and another.
6)  The fact that the trains are articulated and in a locomotive configuration means that it is very easy to make a double-decker train, because these two factors mean that you can have low floors, given that you aren't trying to fit bogies and motors underneath them.
7)  The articulated nature of the train means that the train is more likely to stay intact in the event of a derailment.  Granted, sometimes this doesn't happen, as has been proven by the derailment in Santiago de Compostela (obviously, if you run a train at 190km/h through an 80km/h bend, there will be carnage), but there have been some minor derailments in France involving TGVs running at very high speeds where the train remained intact and virtually nobody was injured.
8)  The fact that they are double-decker means one can get a great view of the verdant French countryside.
9)  They are very light: - the 17-tonne axle load makes them suitable for a wide variety of railways.  However, with so many French women weighing almost nothing, I guess they don't have to worry about the extra weight provided by the passengers!  Don't forget the reduced number of motors helps make this possible.
10)  They achieved the world speed record for a conventional train (574.8km/h) on the then-unopened LGV Est (though with some modifications to the in-service configuration).  Granted, the Japanese (who are also famous for dainty portion sizes) achieved a slightly higher speed, but this was with a maglev (magnetic levitation) train.  At present, I'm not convinced maglev trains are a mass-market product, because the power needed to keep the train afloat is higher than the power saved by the absence of mechanical friction between the track and the train, the internal moving parts of the train etc.  The Japanese are probably closest to perfection after the French, but they don't come close.  Vive la France!