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Japanese Train Sets A Speed Record Of 581 kph
Azuma writes "Last night, on December 2, a high-speed Japanese train set a new record of 581 kph, breaking its own previous record. The new Maglev high speed had real passengers on board this time. They proved that the distance between Osaka and Tokyo can be covered in one hour's time. However, we wouldn't see real trains for a while now since the cost is prohibitively expensive at this time. However, they expect that the cost would come down over the next 20 years. This seems to be the future of transportation, at least in Japan. Here is a detailed article from The Japan Times."
It's hard(er) for a mag-lev train to derail sincehte 'wheels' wrap around the track. For it to derail it would have to rip the track apart. Not saying it's not possible but it's less likely to happen than on conventional trains.
Actually MagLev trains are pretty safe. There are no rails to derail from a the train wraps around then track. One of the complexities is the difficulty in changing tracks as the whole track needs to be moved.
The maximum speed for a maglev train is considered to be around 580 kph due to limits in electrical facilities for the train, the engineers said.
We haven't seen nothing yet. It seems the more juice, the higher the speed. I for one hope to see mass production of Maglev trains. They will be vastly superior to planes at less cost.
I can't help thinking that maglev train development will help achieve cheap spaceflight as well. Imagine a spaceplane taking off from a maglev hitting 1000+ kph.
kph parses as kilo*pico*hour. It makes no sense.
You probably mean km/h.
No need to bastardize a fine international standard.
If you are going to visit Japan, there is a special travel pass you can get, which is only for tourists. It allows you to travel on any train in Japan over one, two, three or four weeks. It is well worth it.
Having spent three weeks travelling around Japan on their trains, I can confirm that they are very impressive. Many of the trains have the kind of luxury fittings that you'd expect to find flying first class. But they are expensive.
Although I believe that Europe is currently developing a Europe-wide high-speed rail system, Japan has had one for years. Why is it only Japan that has such an advanced train system? Travelling by train is great - much more environmentally sound and safer than travelling by car, and of course you get to use the travelling time productively, especially when the trains have plugs for laptops and network connections/WiFi.
Please take a look at a Maglev. Notice how it wraps around the track? It is extremely unlikely for one of these suckers to derail, and physically impossible for these things to crash into each other.
I for one welcome our Maglev overlords. At 581kph it should limit my 43 minute train time to school to roughly 8 minutes. Cross country? At most 30.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
In France , the TGV derailed at least two times in 20 years. Each times at more than 250Km/h (150mph) No injuries, No deaths.
Because the train is linked upon boggies.
As we've seen home built roller costers and rockets on /., now is the time to build your own Maglev train. All you need is posterboard, foamboard, or cardboard, 20-30 square or rectangular magnets, masking tape. Then follow the instructions. Have fun!
my other sig is a 500 page novel
Actually thats the german transrapid. The japanese version is different. There the track wraps arround the train. Pic
>Exactly: most countries screw the taxpayer, who probably just wants better roads to drive their car on
And where are you going to put these better roads? Through all those taxpayers house? More roads -> more traffic -> more congestion -> more roads ->....
It's an endless cycle.
This is so wrong.
SWITCHES?
Nothing deployed? The Germans and chinese will be very upset that they do not exist
Then the mention of lack of land, all the while ignoring that the train is elevated.
Earthquakes? well, since the train is elevated, the supports are designed to handle earthquakes. It is LRT and Heavy Rail that has problems due to the fact that they are heavily anchored to the earth through every inch of the rail. This allows for the rail to be moved from underneath the train while it is moving.
BTW, In japan, the monorails have had NO problems with earthquakes/Typhons, etc, while LRT has to be stopped and adjusted after each item.
Cusion of air for aerodynamics???? It is a "MAGLEV"; it is supported by magnetic force, not aerodynamics.
As to evironmental impact, give me a break. The amount of force is FAR less than an MRI.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Actually, the one in Shanghai, PRC, has been 'deployed'.
Of course the maintenance on regular trains is a wee bit higher - unless you think replacing those big steel wheels and the brake systems due to wear and tear is something that's cheap.
Really ? So what, exactly, do you call this thing then ?
http://www.transrapid.de/en/medien/praesentati
Maglevs can easily operate on levitated tracks above existing tracks if so needed. Of course replacement would be a better option, but disrupting commuters is likely not a viable option, so alternative transportation would have to be introduced for as long as construction would last.
Rail, yes. But this is maglev. Rail doesn't give you an inch leeway. Maglev does. Maglev gives you way -more- than an inch leeway. Slight disruption of the guideways won't be much of a disaster.
Speaking of which - maglevs can't derail. You don't happen to know the -main- cause of rail incidents is, would you ?
But if the segment does get destroyed, you install a new segment. Yes, it'll be more than a bit of steel and welding, depending on the maglev construction (i.e. linear motor in carriage, or linear motor in segments). But either which would not take much longer than replacing a segment of steel rail.
Moot point. These things are meant to go fast, not slow.
When do regular trains ever go slow ?
1. When going through neighborhoods to prevent too much noise from being generated.
- Maglevs are MUCH more silent, not an issue
2. When leaving a station
- Maglevs accellerate much faster, not an issue*
3. When entering a station
- Maglevs decellerate much faster, not an issue*
* where they do go too slow, no worries - the levitation is generally not handled the same way, but rather by batteries in the carriages. They can levitate just fine without external power. Should they run out of internal power as wel, they generally 'land' on plain rubber wheels, and can be collected by another maglev.
You're talking about te type of system where the linear induction motor is inside the track. The track segments get switched by the passing of the train. The magnetic field is directed upwards and does not extend a lobe of more than 10 meters at best.
Which means that you have to be standing on the track, when the train passes over it, to be affected. I *think* you would have other worries at such a time
Even if you think a bird may be affected, though, a track section's length is up to 62 meters in length. Even if travelling at 'only' 400km/h, that's passed in 1.79 seconds, with the length of the segment decreasing over that time as the train passes over.
Inside the train the magnetic field is negligable - less than a CRT monitor.
Kids these days put their coins in Tesla coils anyway
500 Hz at 900 MHz is less than 1 ppm.
.5 ppm, so a 500 Hz shift isn't that much.
The TCXOs (temperature compensated crystal oscillators ("X" being the industry standard abbreviation for crystal - get over it)) used in moble equipment are usually rated about
The more important aspect is the timing skew - GSM and CDMA require the mobile and the base station to have a VERY accurate idea of the time of flight delay between them, so as to keep the transmissions in their allocated time slots (IIRC GSM requires something like a 5 microsecond accuracy, but not being at work yet I can't get the specs right now.)
Moving that fast means the timing skew is going to shift significantly between bursts.
However, most high speed trains are moving to having a cell on the train itself, which then links to the landline system via a dedicated link from train to land.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Eurostar has airline style security because the Channel Tunnel is deemed to be a potential target. You can't just turn up and go, but the check-in closes only 30 minutes ahead of departure, so it's still faster than at an airport, and unlike Heathrow, Orly etc, the stations are right in the hearts of the cities they serve.
I took the train from San Jose to Los Angeles when I visited USA last spring. It took almost 12 hours, and was 5 hours delayed. I'm pretty sure I would be able to bike faster than the train moved (The train was pulled by a single diesel locomotive, by the way, instead of having an electric motor at every wheel set as modern trains do). I don't understand how two such big cities can have such a poor railroad in between, and make use of such old-fashioned car sets. Norway, having less than half the population of Los Angeles, and being much more sparsely populated than California, has a much better and faster railroad system, even though it sucks. (On the most important stretches, the trains move so fast they can without making people sea sick. Of course they could move faster if the tracks were straight, but then 90% of the railroad would have to be in tunnels, unlike in the comparatively flat California).
You do realize that the subsidies that Amtrack and most local train utilities recieve are less than half of what similar road spending requires, right? Think of roads as direct subsidies to the car companies; boston (used as an example because I live there, not because it's an extreme case) subsidizes about 60% of the MBTA's budget, but spends more than that every year on roads even discounting the fiasco that is the big dig. The MBTA serves over 700,000 people daily, and the central artery will serve less than 300,000 drivers, as per Mass Highway Department estimates). Other cities are the same, so citing subsidies to public transport but NOT citing road costs depicts a situation only the car companies would claim is true.
Read jack phelps dot net
580 Km/h = 260 MPH I little .22 goes about 750 MPH a 9mm goes about 1000 MPH. Don't ask me why they call it a bullit train.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Relatively low population density countries with long distances such as the US make it much tougher to economically justify high speed rail than markets where population density is extremely high and concentrated in a low number of key locations, distances are too short to be efficiently served by planes or short enough that planes don't have a speed advantage, and where space for large airport hubs near the city cores is non-existant, extremely expensive or difficult to justify for other reasons.
While it's impressive that the Japanese have reached an incredible 581 km/h on their maglev trains, it's not a practical design for one reason: their maglev requires cryogenic cooling for the magnets to run in superconducting mode so the train can move. Installing cryrogenic cooling systems drastically increases the cost of the train, not to mention adding a good hunk of deadweight that could otherwise be used for carrying passengers and/or cargo.
A better solution is to use the permanent magnet system that was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory a few years ago. Since the LLNL system doesn't need cryrogenically-cooled magnets, that allows for lower train weight, which means more passengers and/or cargo carried. Also, the construction cost per kilometer is quite a bit lower, too. Sure, the LLNL system limits the train to around 500 km/h (310 mph) but that's still way faster than any steel-wheel train in revenue service (that 320 mph test run on the French TGV system some years ago is totally impractical in everyday service).
heh, not quite your idea. I'm not allowed to give details except that its progressing quite well and will most likely go from San Diego to Las Vegas with possible stops in between.
http://www.ga.com/atg/ems/transrap.html
Er no, I meant at the terminals - X-Ray machines for scanning baggage basically (IIRC all baggage on the E* is carry-on but it's been a while since I've been on it).
You make a good point though. The first section of the high-speed (186mph) line from the tunnel to London recently opened and we've already had an attempt by the local low-lifes to push a car onto the track... Don't think it was terrorism though, just Kent.
Of course, this is Slashdot, I can't expect you've actually read the book.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Yep, it was stupid Lockheed Martin that was assuming the use of Imperial units. NASA was using SI units as would any other sane scientific entity.
Couple of things wrong with this...
For starters, unlike the German Transrapid, the Japanese maglev design consists of a roughly u-shaped track which the train sits inside of. Basically, very difficult for the train to derail, but in this case it is the track that wraps around the train (at least this is how they were doing it five years ago, I suppose the Japanese might have changed their design since then).
As for superelevation, it is not a characteristic unique to maglev designs. Ordinary steel rail, even in the backwards US, is usually superelevated in the turns. The trouble is that with the relatively narrow track gauge, and with the relatively tall rail cars that need to be stable even when the train is standing still on the corner for whatever reason, the amount of superelevation they can use is limited. Just like highways - they could superelevate onramps and turns much more than they do, and make it more comfortable to travel at high speeds, but it is extremely uncomfortable (and unstable for large trucks) if for some reason (traffic, accident, stall, whatever) you need to stop on the turn. Maglev doesn't really have this problem, as the train is wrapped around the track (or vice versa), so a little more superelevation could be used.
On a side note, a year or two ago I heard about a group (I don't remember if it was the Germans, Japanese, or someone else) taking people up in passenger jets and doing some various g-rate (different amounts of banking, etc.) turns to see what the limits of passenger comfort were. They were trying to figure out how tight they could make turns on a maglev track before people found it too uncomfortable to use (the purpose was to see if it would be reasonable to lay elevated maglev track along existing highway right of ways in cities, using extreme superelevation to allow the trains to maintain high speed without reducing passenger comfort).
GM, firestone & Philip's Petroleum created a front company that purchased over 400 suburban railway & tram systems in the US, then ran them down & replaced them with buses. They even got a $10,000 fine when the govt prosecuted them under the anti-trust statutes. Yep they destroyed infrastructure that today would cost millions or billions to replace for a then $10,000 penalty.
If it wasn't for that fact, many US cities today could [b]potentially[/m] have suburban railway systems as extensive as Sydney's suburban & inter-urban Cityrail system
Really AFAIC railways systems should be publically run & financed through consilidated revenue, just as roads are. Public transport will never reach it's full potential while it's expected to make a profit (or break even), while there's no equilivent expectation in regards roads
The fuel taxes collected have been more than enough to pay for the roads.
Maybe in Europe with high gas taxes, but not over here. The United states has artificially low gas prices that definitely do NOT reflect the actual cost of gas use.
In Boston, the T system moves 700,000 people on an average day, and costs are bare minimum compared to the big dig, which is estimated by the Mass highway department to positively affect about 190,000 (those who are sped by it during rush hour and other heavy-traffic times; those who drive in low traffic could care less for the improvements). Though the big dig makes Boston a *slightly* extreme example, I was speaking just yesterday with a friend of mine who interned on project approval this summer at the federal DOT, and only a few percent of the budget goes to subsidize public transit, and it's NOT covered by gas taxes. This is likewise true for state DOTs.
Read jack phelps dot net
depends what do you intend as "Eastern Europe" - Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and post-Yugoslavic countries have exactly the same gauge as Germany, Austria or France. In Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet republic they have wider track. There's a station where those two connect, in southern Poland (as the wide track was built to transport metal ore from USSR to the steelworks in the 70's)
I cant see how you think maglev is any safer. You now have to worry about power failures while your traveling at a high rate of speed.
Japanese maglevs have rubber-shod wheels that the trains sit on when they're not levitating. If a train loses power, then it will settle onto the wheels and then be stopped mechanically (i.e. with friction brakes) by the conductor or by remote control.
By the way, most maglevs have emergency power supplies that are designed to maintain levitation and electrodynamic braking capability in the event of power failure.
Those are just two safety measures among many that are built-in to this type of system. It's naive to assume that the designers of these trains haven't thought about the types of things that could conceivably go wrong with them.
D.