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While Switzerland has opted to go all-EMU for its passenger trains, that's not true of every country. For example, the only powered axles on the French TGV are

While Switzerland has opted to go all-EMU for its passenger trains, that's not true of every country. For example, the only powered axles on the French TGV are at the front and rear of the train. All the axles in-between are unpowered. The TGV isn't exactly a primitive train. The TGV was the basis of the Spanish AVE and the Korean KTX. The KTX also uses additional powered axles on the first and last cars, but it still has a lot more unpowered axles than powered ones. As for Amtrak, the Acela isn't a primitive train. It's a mashup of the French TGV and the Canadian LRC. And yes, it has unpowered axles in the middle. Its main problems are its excessive weight (forced by FRA regulations), and the totally inadequate investment in the track over the last 80 years. The basic design isn't that bad.

iSnow 12y ago
>The TGV was the basis of the Spanish AVE Well, the AVE 103 is based on the Velaro platform which most certainly has powered axles on every car, as you would expect from a German train. The same goes for the Russian Sapsan, the Chinese CRH3 and the German ICE3
- tanzam75 12y ago
  The AVE 103 may be based on the Velaro, but the AVE 100, 102, and 112 are based on the TGV, which has non-powered passenger cars. The point is that non-powered passenger cars do not automatically indicate a "primitive" rail system, as the previous commenter seemed to think. Some countries have made one choice, other countries have made the other choice, and some countries even use both technologies simultaneously. And that's just high-speed trainsets. It's quite common to find non-powered passenger cars on conventional trains as well.