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China on Thursday rolled off the production line a prototype magnetic-levitation train with a designed top speed of 600 km per hour in the eastern city of Qingdao.
The debut of China's first high-speed maglev train testing prototype marks a major breakthrough for the country in the high-speed maglev transit system.
The testing prototype, which has one car only, can check and optimize the key technologies and core system components of the high-speed maglev system and lay a technological basis for the forthcoming engineering prototype, said Ding Sansan, head of the train's research and development team and deputy chief engineer of CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., the train builder.
China is the third-largest country in the world by area. If they successfully implement a high-speed rail network, will American objections to scale finally be overcome?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @09:28AM (5 children)
Riiiiight, because the Maglev hispeed train is able to run alongside and on the same routes as the steam powered or diesel ones. There just aren't any change required, no considerations on slopes, the tightness of the curves, everything is fine and dandy.
Yeah, well, maybe the passengers be in for some higher gees and the tracks will need some adamantium alloyed in - but that's not khallow's problem,The Free Market will wave its wand.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 27 2019, @11:41AM (4 children)
Well, yes, it can.
Right again. It wouldn't be the first time a transportation system had to fit the real world rather than the other way around.
Correct once again! You're getting better at this. Just try not to be sarcastic next time.
To summarize, unless you build your human civilization around the transportation system, you don't get to have many of these choices in the first place. It's the same with any other transportation system. Airport runways won't be lengthened just because your plane needs a longer one. Roads won't be changed just because your vehicle has a really wide turning radius. If your train idea can't handle the right of ways that have been obtained (or, sure, within reason increased), then don't put it there.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @03:31PM (3 children)
Must be nice in that universe of yours, where engineering and physics have no bearing on reality.
Make sure you stay there, this one is messy, constrained and sucks. Like a square law of centripetal force with speed - 3 times the speed, 9 times the strain on the tracks at the same curve radius.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 28 2019, @01:17PM (2 children)
News flash: you live in that universe too. There's plenty of examples of rail systems that had to travel slower (which is the real world solution to physics) and make other compromises because they couldn't get the optimal right of way. These can even lead to nasty accidents [wikipedia.org] (the bend in question being due to the limitations of normal right of way acquisition).
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday May 29 2019, @07:14AM
There are technologies that attempted to place high speed trains on existing infrastructure eg. tilt trains. Unfortunately they mostly don't work. Even after drastically improving they line they still can only achieve a modest increase in speed before the failure modes become way too dangerous.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday May 29 2019, @07:21AM
For anyone who's interested here's a link [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately this article doesn't go into why engineers serverely downgraded the theoretical top speed (ie. a 200km/hr train having a failure when not travelling in a very straight line is bad news).