A ride on the high speed rail from Dijon, France to Paris, France is a great experience. It is a distance of about 130 miles and we traveled it in about one and a half hours, at a speed of about 130 miles per hour. The ride is silent and absolutely smooth. They had conductors who punched our tickets, just like an old train, but that is all that was like an old train. The only noise was the noise and feeling of a sonic boom as one train met and passed another high speed train.
As we were touring the French country side we saw the train many times, and it looked like it was going really fast but when we were riding it there was very little feeling of high speed, unless you looked out the window and realized that the cars on the road were almost standing still. A fellow passenger explained that the windows were treated so you did not get the feeling of speed and get motion sickness.
The train stopped at one station along the way. There were two other stations but as long as no one was getting on or getting off the train did not stop or slow down. The tracks of the train are mostly between high banks and it goes under or over all of the roads. It does not stop for traffic and traffic never has to stop for the train.
There was no security check, we just got on at the Dijon station. We had assigned seats, we took our seat and left the station.