Chmee wrote:Damn ... rode the maglev train from the Shanghai airport into town, and then back to the airport on my way out ....
When you're in ground transportation that is moving along at 250 mph, at some point you start to wonder if maybe there shouldn't be a seatbelt or airbag.
No need. At 250mph a crash will simply not be survivable. The base of your skull will snap off, hitting an airbag will be like hitting a brick wall, and the deceleration in general will be just generally fatal. The only real use for seatbelts would be to make life easier for whoever has to clear out all the bodies from the shattered remains of the railcar.
Damned cool technology, though ... takes about 3 minutes to accelerate to its top speed of 430 km/h (digital clock & speedometer in every car lets you know what's happening), cruises at top speed for about one minute, then declerates slowly. 7-minute ride total, but that first corner that you take at 350 km/h .... man, I'm just not used to a train having to use a BANKED curve.
If you've ever ridden on a train before this then you've certainly gone around banked turns. They are pretty common, though the angle of the bank is generally small and not very noticeable.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Dennis Toy wrote:I think USA would benefit from a Maglev system that loops between the major cities.
Why doesnt the USA want to try MagLev? Economics, Engineering?
Both. Maglev is expensive as shit, the Shanghai line cost over a billion dollars to build. Building maglev lines in-between major US cities would cost tens of billions, for every line, and could probuably never be truly economical. Not with the current state of the technology anyway. Right now it's only usable for short very very high traffic lines, and in the US with passenger rail relatively unpopular that would mean attracting a lot of new travelers and being able to undercut airline fares.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Looks like we're having problems enough with basic train tech:
WASHINGTON, April 17 - At least one Acela Express train will be ready to run by Monday morning, an Amtrak spokesman said on Sunday, after mechanics took axles with good brakes from 18 Acela trains and were installing them on two other trains. A brake problem has forced Amtrak to halt all its Acela Express trains since Friday morning.
The railroad was also planning to use conventional, lower-speed equipment to make some of the trips normally made by Acela Express trains, said the spokesman, Clifford Black. To make that possible, Amtrak has canceled some regular midday trains, called Acela Regionals.
"We are filling in a whole lot more than we did on Friday or over the weekend," Mr. Black said. "At least we are beginning to fill up those hourly slots," he said, referring to the Acela Express departures.
He advised passengers to look at www.amtrak.com or call (800) USA-RAIL to find out what trains would be running.
On Thursday night, an inspection of one train found cracks in the spokes that connect the disc brakes to the axles; in all, about 300 brakes among the 1,440 in the fleet of 20 trains turned out to have cracks. Amtrak immediately took the trains out of service, creating major disruptions for travelers on Friday. The Acela Express trains make up about 20 percent of the railroad's seats in the Northeast Corridor, from Washington to Boston, and Amtrak still expects to have limited capacity on Monday.
The railroad has not said exactly what will be required to fix the trains, which are three to five years old. The part that developed cracks was supposed to last for decades.
