During aerodynamic simulation of a moving train set under no-wind condition, the train set is held stationary in the computational domain; the air moves over the train, the ground moves below the train and the wheels rotate about a stationary axis. However, during wind tunnel experiments for train aerodynamics it is not always possible to provide a moving floor (ground) and a rotating wheel. Therefore we need to assess the quality of drag data if moving floor and/or rotating wheel is not used. Here computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations involving the two-equation realizable \(k-\epsilon \) turbulence model have been carried out to evaluate the effect of moving ground and rotation of wheels on the aerodynamic characteristics of a high-speed train set. Simulation results show that the total drag with stationary ground is the least, but when the ground is moving, a 10.2% increase in drag is observed which further increases by 1.2% when the rotation of wheels is also considered. Moving ground increases the aerodynamic drag coefficient and pressure distributions of each bogie. The rotation of the wheels increases the flow velocity near the wheels and the overall drag contribution of the bogies.