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China Abandons Long-Distance Maglev Effort
Ralph Lee writes "China has chosen to abandon its Maglev train effort from Beijing-Shanghai, according to this AP story: 'Besides cost, "the maglev technique was excluded because it does not match the wheel-track technique used by railways in China," the report said, citing Wang Derong, vice-chairman of the China Transport Association.... The scrapping of the 9-year-old maglev project - two weeks after the country's first maglev, a short stretch in Shanghai, began regular operation - represents a setback for the development of the technology in China, which many had seen as one of its key markets.'" The short 18-mile MagLev run mentioned earlier remains in operation, but China is not going to use magnetic levitation for the planned 750-mile Beijing-Shanghai link.
If I recall correctly, maglev trains are extremely difficult to derail due to the high walls surrounding them. They can also go really, really fast, as in some have proposed 650 km/h fast (This is just a number I recall hearing, if anyone has any more info. please post). In addition to this they could revolutionize travel due to the fact that, let's face it, airports suck. If I could show up at a train-station spend a few minutes there and then be on my way to where-ever, I think that would be wonderful.
If you put a fast train on a 100year old track, you will never be able to reach 300km/h.
Yes you will, but only once. The French did speed trials in the 70s with conventional train engines and cars (well, apart the engine that had more power), to test the limits of conventional railways, and they reached about 300Km with that train, but the rail track behind the train was all bent out of shape as a result. I saw a very impressive photo of that bent track once, but I can't seem to find it anymore.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Maglev isn't ready for long distance track, the cost per mile of track of the maglev is 15 million of $ the mile ! When a TGV/ICE line isn't more expecive than twice the cost of a regular line. A this time the TGV/ICE are cheaper, proven technology, safe fast enougth.
When building a new TGV line, the RFF (railtrack infrastructure division of the french railroad company) not only buys the lands needed to build the high-speed line, but also proposes to buy the surrounding lands in a 200m radius.
As they don't want the construction to be delayed furthermore, the prices are usually very interesting.
However, I believe the noise of the TGV goes farther than 200m away...
The true high speed trains (like some in france, and the new one going under the mountain chain in Europe, I don't remember what it's called) have to use specially layed track. Those sorts of high speed trains (due to the speed and the wave in the track that it generates ahead of the train) cannot handle the "flaws" used in regular track. It needs track that is bound much more securely to the ground to limit the wave generated in the rail, requires a sturdier railbed, require very strait track (only very gradual curves due to the speed) and many of them are electric requiring lines to be run anyways.
It's not as simple as everyone thinks to just slap a high speed train on regular track.
The French were right 30 years ago by scrapping the Aerotrain project (pictures, films) in favour of the TGV...
Vibration.
:-P) More modern pendular systems such as the ones build by the Swedish, the Italians or the Canadians, achieve 230-250 in commercial speed on reasonably modern classic tracks.
Actually, this bent track was more in the sixties, the '70s tests were around 250-280 km/h in a very straight corridor (Mulhouse-Strasbourg), and didn't actually destroy the tracks (with the amount of traffic on that line, they'd better not to
Another challenge the TGV (and ICE) solved is the power supply: conventional electric feeding systems vibrate too much at 300 km/h, and even if you managed to reach that speed despite the poor contact, you'd rip the cables away. (in fact, the TGV 001 prototype, still displayed on the A35/A36 motorway near Belfort (place of construction) and Brumath (large maintenance facility), as well as its commercial predecessor, the Turbotrain (still in little use on Paris-Normandy and a few even more remote regional lines), used a gas turbine specificially to avoid this problem.
X-2000 or Pendolino would probably make a lot of sense given what I perceive should be the state of China's tracks and maintenance procedures.
> Do you think the maglev IP is actually patented in China?
China signed the TRIPS agreement. (as did every developed country and 95% of developing countries.)
The deal was: the rich countries will trade manufactured and agricultural goods with the poor countries, and the poor countries will enforce the patents and copyrights of the rich countries.
The proclaimed trade benefits for the poor countries never happened (and what power do they have to complain?), but the enforcement of patents, trademarks, and copyrights has been enforced (the US threatens to cease trade and cancel IMF and WorldBank funds when the poor get angry). This is why Africa can't manufacture AIDS treatments even though they cost less than 35 cents to manufacture each daily dose.
(For more info, and excellent book is Information Fuedalism, by Peter Drahos)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
that maglev trains do not use wheels and tracks?
I don't really understand what your intentions are with that post, but at least it's partly wrong. Maglev trains do need tracks, they simply don't have what you'd normally call rails, hence literally there also can't be derailing. Physically, derailing a maglev train probably requires destroying the track or the train (before derailing) or doing both at the same time by having two trains colliding.
If you want some information on the transrapid project (the one used in Shanghai), you can start here or here. The third page is the home page of the German test facility for the transrapid trains. It's unfortuantely in german only, but it has some pictures that don't need translation...
Errm, basically every modern train generates electrical energy from slowing down, I don't see why this should be different.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I wouldn't be surprised if it was REALLY the price per half kilometer, and some journalist just plain got it wrong. The Chinese have a unit of measurement called the "li", which last century was standardized to 500m, or half a kilometer to be easily interchangable with metric units (before that was 576m).
Why would you have to search everyone for bombs and weapons? What are they going to do? Shoot the passengers? Blow up the train? These are no more threats than they are on a TGV, or ICE. All one does it kill a couple hundred passengers at most, and destroy a piece of track (if at all).
It is impossible for any maglev to take off into the air, and fly into an important building. The Maglev also does not carry extreme amounts of flammable liquids, so it is not a bomb in itself. Remember, the former WTC did withstand the impact of the plane flying it, but the fuel burning melted the steel structure which collapsed after a certain period. Even if terrorists managed to get a Maglev airborne, then they would at most cause a dent in most buildings.
This of course if no more possible than getting a TGV airbourne, and using it to bomb the French president, or using the ICE to bomb Berlin.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
I read the story in a Chinese website. The major reason is indeed that the two technologies are not compatible. The new maglev line cannot be incorporate into the existing network (the line between Beijing and Shanghai connects more than 20 major lines in the existing Chinese railway network). If they use maglev, they have to build separate stations for it. So many people have to go from a maglev station to a tranditional station to transfer trains, which defeats the benefits of having high-spead lines. The wheel based line will still be faster than 300kmph.
Nobody is banned from producing AIDS treatments. What they are banned from is selling the treatment at far below actual cost and giving the companies that formulated it nothing. Do you think it would be a good idea to allow poor nations to manufacture any patented drug they want without compensating the inventor at all? Let me give you a hint, if this ever happened, it would be the end of new drug development. Who would spend upwards of a billion dollars on R&D knowing that they would get no real reward for it? Drug companies do, and should, give a certain amount of medicine to poor countries as a charitable donation. But this is far different than allowing the country to produce it without paying the inventor.
As rail speeds increase, so does the damage that can be done by a terrorist. A 650km/h maglev sounds interesting at first sight - but how much damage could be done by a well placed bomb? Although the thing contains no fuel on board, the combination of released kinetic and magnetic energy would, I guess, be pretty destructive. And because the infrastructure (track) is so expensive, the cost of any damage would be enormous.
But since the train is always grounded, you could allow a remote-control override to slow and completely stop the train in case of emergency. No need to put the conductor in complete control of the train anymore because there is no risk of it falling out of the sky due to malfunction.
It works just like a "normal" electric motor (that turns into a alternator on breaking). Check the Transrapid Hompage and click on "Technology" (stupid "clever" link auto-redirects to homepage), or this site. The flywheel is the moving train, just that the momentum of inertia is linear instead of angular.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
This is my first post on slashdot so please bear with me. Some rail/maglev information: - power consumption increases in a non-linear fashon due to air turbulence. After about 350 km/h the curve gets mighty steep so expect to pay a bundel. To get around this problem, the Swiss have toyed with the idea of building a line in a vacum underground crossing the country, but that's a whole other story. - Noise also goes up in a non-linear fashon. After about 320 km/h the aerodynamic noise overtakes the wheel/rail contact noise. - High speed rail lines have a base line cost of about 10 M euros / km. This ratio can easily double (or more!) if a lot of the line is in tunnels or on viaducts. For example, only 20% of the new Taiwan line will be at grade, in contrast to some older high speed lines in other countries at about 90% at grade. Another multiplying factor, which typically is greater than structures, is politics. Not to get down on your local politican, its just that "in the good old days", they big boys just moved inhabitants out of the way and poured the concrete. Now days, it is relatively easy to mobilize the "not in my back yard" types. - The difference between designing a conventional rail line and a high speed one is too great to make any fair comparison. It's like comparing the design of a freeway versus a two lane highway. One thing that can be said though is that if a high speed line is designed correctly, it works like the trunk of a tree: you zip across the country in the trunk at a high speed, then branch off on the conventional rail lines to many different cities, resulting in more fair use of public money. Hope this is of interest.
We've voted to get one in Seattle 2 or 3 times now. Our state government keeps getting in the way.
No, X2000 don't achieve 230-250 on regular tracks.
If I recall correctly, the record is around 270 km/h on a test tour. The ordinary top speed is about 200 km/h.
200 km/h is NEVER achieved on old track. It is only achived on new track that is built specially for this. The highspeed parts of the system is newbuilt using hevier rails than before, less curves, hevier ballast, new overhead wires and new signal systems.
Of course, when this modifications is made, you can run a convetional train almost as fast as X2000...
Swedens Intercity trains runs at 160 km/h on the same track as X2000 runs 200 km/h on. I regualry choose them instead of X2000 since they are cheaper, more frequent and almost as fast.