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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."
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Bet those passengers were scared out of their pants. With it flying that fast, I'd be...if the thing derailed, you'd be really screwed.
I've ridden some of the current shinkasens, and you really don't notice. It's a very smooth ride, and you feel very safe. The best I can compare it to is flying on an airplane, only quieter and smoother.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.
for those of us who don't use that artificial metric crap. I mean, really, if God wanted us to use the Metric system, he would have made the distance between the King's nose and his thumb to be exactly one meter.
I just wish the US would invest in more passenger trains. They don't have to be super fast (like the one in this article), but imagine how much fuel/electricity we could save if we could all easily commute by train. And hey, you can always sleep on the train on the way to work, something you can't do while driving. (Or rather, something you shouldn't do, I'm sure someone's tried it.)
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.
Living in Las Vegas, I would love a high speed rail to LA. It is all desert, plenty of room for a right of way! I'm sure the casino's would love getting people from LA to the city in an hour as well!
:)
Just remember in ten years, it was my idea
kph parses as kilo*pico*hour. It makes no sense.
You probably mean km/h.
No need to bastardize a fine international standard.
He was trying to make the point that at higher speeds the train would be more likely to derail. but he's wrong anyway as the bottom of the train wraps around the track. In order to derail the mag-lev train would have to rip the track apart. Additionally, since the train is wrapped around the track and doesnt just sit on it like conventional trains do, its possible to superelevate the track (track rises on one side as it turns). Superelevation is used to counteract the centrifugal forces as a vehicles makes a tight turn at fast speeds.
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.
And much less hassle as well.
Train:- Arrive 5 minutes before departure.
- Get on.
- Travel, with passport check on the way.
- Get off.
Airplane:I, for one, welcome our new super-fast trains. I've used the 300kph trains (TGV,Eurostar,etc) and they are a really nice way to get around. For travelling within continents, these will a far better alternative than flying.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
But I thought I'd bring it up. Inevitably there are going to be long threads of why the US doesn't have this leading to conspiracies involving auto manufactures, oil companies, and congessmen payed for by Amtrak.
Before all that gets carried away, a minor side note. There was an article online, and if I find the citation I'll respond to my own post with it, that spoke of why using innerstates as guides for high speed railways was impossible. Basically innerstates have very frequent curves in them, and at the speeds these trains are going, you'd either be making everybody motion sick, or worse, throwing them back and forth inside the train. You need very straight shots for long distances for these to work right.
And, I might add, there's _very_ little incentive to have ultra-high speed trains from a legal perspective. The first time one of these has an accident every blood sucking vermin of a low-life profession would come sniffing around through the remains looking for anyone remotely related to anyone with at least a hangnail to sue the pants off whatever company was running this system.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
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."
Umm... a greased Scotsman is a train.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
"Last night, on December 2..."
Presumably they did the test at night so the passengers wouldn't be able to see anything and get scared... (apart from the 2001 Space Odyssey style mind-bending light show)
No Norm, those are your safety glasses; I'll wear my own thanks...
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.
This is obviously very impressive. Maglev trains are very expensive (especially the track), but they reach enormous speeds. It gets even better if you let them run in a depressurised tunnel, allowing them to reach speeds of several thousand kilometers per hour. Of course, that costs lots of extra moolah, but its an upgrade possibility once maglevs have become more commonplace.
Concerning the question of why other countries don't have trains as cool as Japan - well, several reasons. The US just aren't interested. Appearantly, the American Way means having two cars per family and getting stuck in a traffic jam at least once a week. Besides, there are geographical concerns. America, as well as my home country (Germany) are definitely two-dimensional, rather than a linear strip of settlement like Japan, meaning that one requires a grid of synchronised train lines. Trust me, that's hard.
Also, for the US there's the problem of population density. Sure, in the cities, public transport has customers. But in the rural regions, there isn't enough demand to make narrow-interval trains profitable. And the broader the intervals (say, twice a day?) the lower the interest. After all, why wait two hours for the next train, when you can jump in your car now?
Divide et impera!
God measured in cubits.
Also, 581 kph = 116.5050712 microparsecs per century.
It's expending 8 times as much energy to go twice as fast... which is even more amazing..
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
Twenty Years ago the first maglevs were build in Germany. Increadibly fast and very quiet. For Testingpurposes. Since then ... nothing happened. Oh, yes, they sold the whole stuff for a piece of bread to china which also build the first "german maglev" for public use. Well, in germany we still have no public maglev.
At least in central europa (germany, france, benelux) we have conventional trains running at speeds of 150-300kph since decades. But then europa has a highly incompatible trainsystem. Western Europa (except once Great Britain) uses one type of track, eastern europa another one and while the british system closely resembles western europas tracks its not safe for high speeds.
Thank goodness china desided to use western-europa tracks which will more or less force eastern europa and russia to adopt or wither away.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
You're forgetting that you can even take a comfortable night train and sleep while you travel. I do this with my family when we need to cover a "one night's distance". We loose less "wake time" and we arrive in a better shape.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
While I do not fully agree with your assesment of Chicago->LA, the most important route to build would be NY->Pit->Det->Chg->Mil.
These 4 cities have more traffic between them than any other route in the USA. In fact, most airlines make all their profits doing cargo between NY/Chg.
As to Chi->LA, well, I would argue for 3 East-west high-speed maglevs with stops every 1000M. Likeiwise, 4 North-South (W, Rocky, Missisppi River, E coast) to carry cargo.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Whilst there are inter-country trains, it's still a damn long way between, say, Hamburg and Rome, and planes would be quicker than the current generation of very fast trains. 600 km/h maglevs will increase considerably the distance over which a train's travel times are comparable to city-airport-airport-city.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I don't think so. There have been terrorist attacks on trains (e.g., Carlos the Jackal's bombing in 1983). They just haven't been very successful and haven't led to cumbersome security measures.
From a terrorist point of view, I suspect that a building is a better target than a train: easier to get to, easier to get away from, and more likely to kill lots of people.
In fact, even when it comes to airline security, Americans seem to be going from one extreme to another without ever getting it right: prior to 9/11, airlines just didn't want to inconvenience passengers even though even simple measures could have prevented 9/11. Post 9/11, US airlines seem to be working hard to make their passengers' lives as miserable as possible (without necessarily improving security much).
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.
Well too bad you are living in UK, well known for his train system :)
More seriously, though, i disagree with you to some extent, having taken both the plane and the train extensively.
Waiting for another train or plane is exactly the same thing. They can be both delayed very easily by technical problems, weather problems, and strike (only if you are in France of course, by the way i am French).
But when i look at the trip Paris-London, i prefer taking the train. You have quite a big number of trains leaving everyday to London. The overall trip is around 2-3 hours depending on stop. But the big plus is you leave in the center of Paris, you arrive in the center of London.
Now when you look at the plane, you would be better off if you arrive at least one hour before (probably more as they get anal with security). Then you have 45 mn plane and you have to wait for your case, etc... But since the airports are far from the center, you can add easily 45 mn both ways to get from the airport to the center.
Annoying !!! I prefer moving more freely in the train and then to arrive directly in London, than having to take the plane.
Pelops
Seriously, if you're not willing to pay tax dollars for rail infrastsructure, why also pay for roads and bridges? And while you're at it, why not dismantle the education system and courts as well? When private enterprise performs all of these civic functions, will "freedom" have been expanded or will we simply have seen a net transfer of power away from voters into private hands? Just asking. --M
Every post-1870 train is using boggies.
What made the TGV survive its derailments are:
1. it's designed so that the train sets, once the cars are attached one to the next, is very rigid, so if it goes out of the track, you have a long big dildo slipping through the country until it stops
2. so far, it encountered no overpassing bridge during a derailment (the track is designed to overpass as much as possible, but sometimes it's not possible)
The ICE at Eschede didn't have the luck of point 2.
I really don't want to be in the first TGV to derail 1.5km before the entrance of a tunnel.
OTOH, I love the damn thing. Too bad they are still at the big yellow Caterpillar stage near the A4! (and still at the political bickering stage for the Dijon-Mulhouse-Basel, damn, damn, damn)
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.
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!
The Eurostar already has some luggage and personal screening (x-ray) but that only takes a few minutes. I normally leave my house 20 minutes before the train pulls out and it takes 10 minutes for me to reach the train station.
A train will always be more convenient than an airplane because it departs and arrives into the middle of the city and does not require complex check in or bagage handling as you carry your own bags onto the train.
Moreover, I cannot imagine anyone trying to attack a train as no doubt the subway would be much easier and would have a much bigger impact. The disruption to a city (like NY or London) if people felt the subway was unsafe makes the impact of any sort of attack on a train pale into insignificance.
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From the article:
You see, they haven't tested it with real people, only with technicians.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
even simple measures could have prevented 9/11
You mean like the passengers beating the crap out of some dorks with box cutters, rather than sitting like the trained sheep the left has been attempting to turn them into?
More of my thoughts
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.
I live in Boston and I take the train (amtrak acela) all the time to NYC. I do not own a car. The eastern corridor (DC-NYC-Boston) is the only profitable route that Amtrak runs. In roughly 450 miles (shorter than the length of California by about 250 miles) the 5 major metropolitan areas (Boston, New York, Philly, Baltimore and DC. There's also minor mets such as New Haven, Providence and Trenton) represents about 60 million people. The density is roughly comparable to that of England. The current system, even though profitable, has SERIOUS limitation in its currently incarnation - it has to abide to Metro North's speed limit of 60MPH when it's in Metro North territory, for example. This is done on a train that's designed to cruise at 150MPH. Bottom line - you CAN run a profitable maglev operation in US.
The most anoying one is going into Watford Junction from Euston. Most of the trains stop there, yet the track has been cambered for high speed for the odd train which doesn't stop. Result: everything sliding off the table.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
On every inch of the track?
Airlines have tight security just at the airports because it's hard to take down a plane in flight from the ground. A train rail, on the other hand, is right there at (or near) ground level. Some jackass could damage the line at just the worst moment and cause a disaster.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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).
It's also worth noting that the Shinkansen lines in Japan have never had _any_ passenger deaths. The odd inattentive railway worker, or suicide jumping on the tracks, but _no_ train accidents.
They've been running since 1964. I would say almost 40 years of constant use with no accidents is a pretty damn fine record. JR are very good at safety.
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
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.
Safety is only obtained by rigorous track maintenance and inspection. In Japan they have the earthquake hazard, nothing they can do about that. If the track buckles, at that sort of speed, disaster is inevitable.
One good thing is that this particularly fine piece of engineering is not maintained by either Balfour-Beatty or Jarvis, who between them are responsible for quite a few disasters and near-disasters in the UK. Basic things like not putting a piece of track back, and not telling the signaller it was not there (Twice!)
The Japanese are more meticulous than most when it comes to carrying out regular inspections, even so this is fairly risky.
> than sitting like the trained sheep the left
> has been attempting to turn them into
The left what? The left hand? The left foot? Oh, you mean the Left! It seems your grasp of history is as tenuous as that of spelling, otherwise you'd know that a lot more social change has taken place because of public disobedience by what you call "the Left" than by (presumably) your own camp. Attributing conformism to the hippies of the 60s, or the civil rights marchers of the 50s, or even what you would probably consider the quintessential Lefties--the Bolsheviks of the Russian Revolution--smacks of ignorance and self delusion.
In fact, in recent history conformism is a trait much more frequently found amongst conservatives, or the Right. Who introduced the doctrine of "if you're not with us you're against us"? Or forwarded the notion that opposing the war in Iraq is paramount to being anti-American? Don't get distracted into addessing those particular issues, focus on the fact that they exemplify conformist thinking--behaving the way your leaders want you to as a matter of policy.
Do you know how hard it is to make a wheel, suspension system that can stand the enormous forces in 500 km/h.
(vibration, small bumps etc.)
The wheels are supposed to last for years running daily at that speed. (this is a big problem for high speed trains.)
MAGLEV has "no" moving parts.
eg. less material stress.. (safer and cheaper in the long run.)
MAGLEV's only limit is the air drag.
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
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).
Arrive 5 minutes before departure.
Wow, that must be a really fast train!
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
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.