page_title: Bilevel rail car
section_title: France
hierarchical_section_title: Bilevel rail car / Operators / France
caption_attribution_description: English: Special TGV 4402 "V150" running at 574 kilometers per hour at kilometer 192 of high-speed line "Est européenne" as it establishes a new world speed record on April 3, 2007 near Le Chemin, Meuse, France. Français&#160;: Le TGV 4402 "V150" à la composition atypique roulant à 574,8 km/h au PK 192 de la LGV Est européenne, alors qu'il établit un nouveau record du monde de vitesse le 3 avril 2007 près du Chemin, Meuse, France. 日本語: 特別仕様のTGV 4402 "V150" が2007年4月3日にフランスのMeuseのLe Chemin近郊の総延長192kmの東ヨーロッパ高速線において時速574.8kmで走行する様子。世界記録を樹立した。
context_page_description: The bilevel car or double-decker train is a type of railcar that has two levels of passenger accommodation, as opposed to one, increasing passenger capacity. In some countries such vehicles are commonly referred to as dostos, derived from the German Doppelstockwagen.
  The use of double-decker carriages, where feasible, can resolve capacity problems on a railway, avoiding other options which have an associated infrastructure cost such as longer trains, more trains per hour or adding extra tracks besides the existing line.
  Bilevel trains are claimed to be more energy efficient, and may have a lower operating cost per passenger. A bilevel car may carry up to about twice as many as a normal car, if structure and loading gauges permit, without requiring double the weight to pull or material to build. However, a bilevel train may take longer to exchange passengers at each station, since more people will enter and exit from each car. The increased dwell time makes them most popular on long-distance routes which make fewer stops.
  Bilevel cars may not be usable in countries or on older railway systems with low loading gauges.
context_section_description: The Chemin de fer de l'État in France ran voitures à 2 étages double-deck suburban coaches from 1933. Its successor, the SNCF, has been running VB2N double-decker coaches since 1975; VB2N were introduced from 1975 as a replacement of the État cars.
  Since 1982, SNCF has been running double-deck RER trains. And since 1996, SNCF runs double-deck TGV cars on heavily used high-speed services, such as on the Paris-Lyon-Marseille line. Many suburban rail, regional rail and high-speed services are operated by double-deck DMUs, EMUs, coaches and TGV. The TGV Duplex are the fastest double-decker trains in the world with a commercial top speed of 320 km/h. Specially tuned trainset 4402 also holds the world speed record for conventional trains, reaching 574.8 km/h in 2007. The French loading gauge dictates that the double-deck cars have a maximum height of 4.32 m (14 ft 2 ¹⁄₈ in).
caption: TGV 4402 (operation V150) reaching 574.8 km/h (357 mph)
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