从高速化的发展趋势出发，应用仿真研究方法，以沪宁高速区段为例，对高速列车的牵引、制动和阻力特性进行分析，计算比较了从180 km/h中速列车到500 km/h高速列车的不同旅行速度、运行时分、运能等有关高速列车运用效果的要素，并对不同速度等级高速列车的能耗进行了初步比较，分析了在现有科技水平下铁路干线高速化应选用的合理速度。

Starting from the trend of high speed rail development and taking the Nanjing-Shanghai section of Beijing-Shanghai high speed rail line for example, this article analyzed the tractive, braking and running resistant characteristics of high speed train by way of computer simulation. A brief calculation and comparison on socio-economic effect were made including runing speed, travel hours and traffic capacity of various trains at the speed between 180 km/h to 500 km/h. In addition the energy consumption of trains at different speed was compared .The proposal concerning the reasonable speed level of high speed rail traffic under the existing conditions was made.