CHINA REVEALS COMMERCIAL MAGLEV TRAIN

After 20 years of tinkering and testing, China has unveiled its first passenger-ready magnetically levitated, or “maglev,” locomotive.
The engine is capable of a ground speed of 600 kpm, or more than 350 mph, according to CRRC, China’s national railroad company, making it the world’s fastest ground vehicle made to carry passengers.
A train traveling nonstop at that speed could go from New York to Chicago in about 2.5 hours or from Berlin to Rome in four.
China’s maglev can pull up to ten passenger cars, each holding as many as 100 people, CRRC says.
But Shanghai is the only city in China with the ability to host a working maglev railway, with one running between the city’s airport and downtown. CRRC has used it as a testbed for years.
Other cities have started to make plans to be part of the nation’s eventual maglev train network, which supposedly will unite the country’s major cities by 2035.
The network is part of China’s “123” transportation plan: no more than a one-hour commute within a major city, a maximum two-hour trip between nearby cities, and three hours tops to get from any city cluster to any other anywhere in the country.
It’s a multi-year project because maglev trains require brand new, dedicated runways.
Here’s a thoroughly oversimplified description of how the train works.
In some designs, the maglev train sits in a U-shaped concrete channel.
In China’s version, the train straddles a raised concrete plank-shaped roadbed.  (Imagine a person straddling a horse.) 
But no part of the train touches the plank roadway.
Electromagnets line the surface of the roadbed and the train’s underbelly. The magnets display the same poles. When two magnets approach each other with the same pole, they repel each other.
As a result, the maglev train hovers above the roadbed. It has no wheels, axles, or other moving parts or any physical contact with the roadbed itself. It’s suspended in air by the sheer force of the magnets pushing each other away.
The roadbed also contains magnets that propel the train. 
Electronics in the train create a magnetic field with a polarity opposite to that of the magnets in the roadbed’s sides. Opposite poles attract, so the train is pulled forward.
There are several maglev train designs in the works and Germany and Japan are actively planning their own systems.
However, China has the most advanced program, claiming to hold 42 percent of the world’s patents in maglev technology, more than double those of Japan, in second place with about 20 percent.
TRENDPOST: Maglev train technology is hugely expensive and requires a dedicated roadway, so will only be financially practical where large numbers of people need to regularly cross long distances.

China’s new maglev train.

Credit: CRRC