Trains GA‑class High‑importance

Trains Portal Sel week 16, 2005 This article is within the scope of WikiProject Trains, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to rail transport on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. See also: WikiProject Trains to do list and the Trains Portal.TrainsWikipedia:WikiProject TrainsTemplate:WikiProject Trainsrail transport GA This article has been rated as GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

The naming convention for wikipedia articles is to use the term most commonly used, much as articles on people are titled after their most widely known name - eg. Buzz Aldrin who is actually called 'Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr'. I propose that this article is renamed Maglev train as it is what they most commonly known as. 'Magnetic levitation train' sounds clumsy and is rarely said as a term. CharlesC 16:00, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good Idea, and has been done by myself 2/1/06 Medscin 16:46, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps, but you renamed it "Maglev Train" not "Maglev train"; I've put in a request that it be moved once again, as "train" is not a proper noun. ProhibitOnions 15:40, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone cite a source for the claim that there is a study for a maglev train between Philadelphia's International Airport and the Urban Core?

There is no maglev to Philadelphia International Airport. Only SEPTA Regional Rail Line R1 goes there, a conventional steel-wheled train. ProhibitOnions 15:46, 12 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like I may have misread your question. My apologies. However, I would be surprised if any serious plans would exist for this, as the R1 only takes about 15 minutes to get to Center City. (A future east coast maglev might, however, pass by the airport.) ProhibitOnions 18:37, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the federal government has money to throw at a maglev project, and this is one of the projects UNDER CONSIDERATION... it would seem to some (this is speculative) that the feds wish to keep these dollars somewhere on the east coast, which i can not really comment on.

Anyhow, there are articles out there in the las vegas sun and review journal on the vegas-LA mag lev that mention this project in philly which one could find on google.

here are some links: www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2001/07/23/daily6.html

www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2001/01/15/daily36.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vegassteven (talk • contribs) on 01:18, 20 February 2006.

Vegassteven 05:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The distinction between maglev trains and coilguns for launching payloads into space seems an artificial one, as both use linear induction motors to provide acceleration (a coilgun is only the motor part, with passive stabilization). --Christopher Thomas 03:34, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The introduction to this entry states that maglev vehicles can travel at extremely high speeds (404 mph) with "resonable" energy consumption because there is no contact between the vehicle and the track. In fact, wheel friction was never the issue. Rather, the problem is air friction, which goes up geometrically -- thus, any train running at those kinds of speeds would not have "reasonable" energy consumption (i.e. would not be commercially viable).

Furthermore, the claim that maglev allows for far faster speeds than what is possible conventional rail is debateable as TGV's have run as fast as 320mph under test conditions.

Emccaughrin

Furthermore, the claim that maglev allows for far faster speeds than what is possible conventional rail is debateable - No, it isn't, at least not in the near future. All conventional high speed rail in existence is electric. Running electric trains faster than 350 km/h is considered commercially unfeasible, because friction between the pantograph and overhead wire is so great that the wires need to be replaced after just a few runs. Maglev doesn't have that problem because it's contactless and it is already proven to run commercially at 430 km/h, not just under lab conditions. Combustion engine-powered high speed rail might achieve that, but a diesel high speed train has never been built commercially because of the enourmous weight of the engine or gas turbine required. Klafubra 09:49, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

First, I'm going to give yet another ObPedanticNote about the difference between polynomial and exponential progressions. Exponential progressions are "geometric". The relation between speed and energy consumption for objects moving through air is cubic (a polynomial relation). Secondly, as conventional passenger aircraft (which fly just below Mach 1) demonstrate, the energy requirements of subsonic high-speed movement through air are low enough that such speeds are still cost-effective for commercial passenger travel. Thus, I question the appropriateness of the "not reasonable" label. Thirdly, unless your train's internal mechanisms are frictionless, you'd better believe there's energy loss going on. The modes that I can think of offhand have quadratic (second-power) energy to speed relations, but the coefficients are considerably larger than those for air resistance, so the speed at which they balance is significant. --Christopher Thomas 16:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The commercial aircraft comparison is not applicable as they do not fly at Mach 1 at ground level. Air density is considerably lower at 30,000 feet. -EM

The commercial aircraft comparison is applicable, as both the force required per unit cross-sectional craft area and the energy required are still far larger than any train built to date. Commercial jetliners typically travel in excess of 900 km/hour. At 30,000 feet, the usual aircraft cruising altitude, air has about a third the density it does at sea level (0.4 kg/m^3, vs. 1.2 kg/m^3). See density of air for calculations. Given a cubic rate of energy change with speed, a sea level craft would expend the same energy travelling cube_root(1/3) * 900km/h, or about 620 km/h. The world speed record for a wheeled train is 515 km/h, and for a magnetic levitation train 581 km/h (high-speed rail). Proposed operating speeds for maglev trains are typically below 500 km/h (about half the energy requirements of aircraft-speed-equivalent trains, or (500/620)^3).

You are correct in noting that the increase in speed is not _free_ - plane tickets cost more than low-speed rail tickets - but the whole idea behind high-speed rail and maglev systems is that customers will pay a premium to be able to travel a given distance more quickly. Also note that, due to increased speed, the energy required per unit _distance_ only goes up quadratically, not cubically. --Christopher Thomas 23:48, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Proposed operating speeds for maglev trains are typically below 500 km/h." Not to nitpick, but this is a lot less than 404mph (I interpret "reasonable" as commercially viable). -EM

The 650km/h (404 mph) figure cited in the article is close enough to the 620 km/h figure I cite above for the energy requirements to be very close to those for aircraft. My figures for aircraft are actually a conservative underestimate - 940 km/h is a typical figure for commercial aircraft (example: boeing 747), which yields almost exactly 650 km/h as an equivalent ground speed. I am also skeptical of seeing a maglev with routine operating speeds over 500 km/h in service any time soon. High speed rail trains are capable of over 500 km/h, but are more typically run at closer to 300 km/h.--Christopher Thomas 01:30, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, the real world doesn't always obey back-of-the-envelope calculations. It could be rather expensive for a train operator to sustain 400mph up 4% grades, or brake/accelerate @400mph when going through curves. And while the airplane analogy might work as a rough, first-order approximation, such an analysis doesn't consider things like ground turbulance, which could be considerable. Also, HSR trains are considerably longer than a plane -- granted that improves the seats per frontal area value, but what effect does that have on overall drag? As mentioned, there are no commercial proposals to build 400mph Maglev's, thus the "reasonable" claim seems more like 'Popular Mechanics' type fodder. -EM

Going up a 4% grade requires little power consumption compared to plowing through air at 650 km/h. It's very easy to calculate exactly how much energy it takes. You're going at about 180 m/s, which means you're going _up_ at about 7 m/s. This requires 70 W/kg. By comparison, you need something along the lines of 5 MW/m^2 of frontal area to push through the air (there's a coefficient that reduces this for streamlined objects, but it'll be in the same ballpark). As for ground turbulence, part of the _point_ of maglev is that it decouples the train from much of that. For systems that are more sensitive to precision alignment, like the German system tested many years back, the track is made smooth enough for variations to be negligeable. For other systems, like the Japanese one, these constraints are relaxed due to a larger gap between the track coils and the train. As for train length, as long as the linkages between cars are sufficiently streamlined, the body of the train contributes far less to power consumption than breaking the train into two pieces would, for the same amount of cargo. There will of course be a limit to what can be pulled by one engine, but you have the same kinds of limits for conventional trains. As for your "popular science" epithet, please provide numbers to back up any claims you choose to make. I interpret lower running speeds as being selected simply because it's more cost-effective to use them (an airplane ticket costs enough that commuters may not want to use a train with the same ticket price). This is an economics issue, not a technical one.--Christopher Thomas 15:35, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Where HSR competes against air, rail ticket prices are basically identical to air (aside from special promotional offers). You can verify this yourself by visiting any one of expedia.com, sncf.com, eurostar.com, etc (I just did this a few minutes ago for London-Paris and Paris-Nice). Thus, your ticket economics interpretation is not valid.

While it might be technically feasible to run a 400mph train, it would not be economical to do so. Hence, I stand by my claim that the energy cost would not be "reasonable" because there is no credible business plan that could justify the added cost. -EM

Your initial claim was that it was not technically feasible. Now you claim that it isn't ecomomically feasible. Please provide economic data from maglev trains proposed and currently running to back up your claim. So far, I'm seeing lots of opinion, but not much backing it up.--Christopher Thomas 19:09, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Anon addition moved to the talk page until citations are provided. It would also have to be rewritten for narrative viewpoint. --Christopher Thomas 29 June 2005 15:53 (UTC)

MagLev might be built accross the Atlantic, but this would cost billions, maybe even trillions. It would go from New York to England and England to New York, in Record time of just 54 minutes, and at the speed of roughly 8000kmph which is faster than a bullet! Of course, air in the way would slow it down so in order to get to that collosal speed you would first of all have too make a vacuum. Though expensive, it is theoretically possible and if many different countries contribute to it, it could work.

Has anyone tested this in a vacuum? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.129.225.151 (talk • contribs) 18:33, October 31, 2006.

I cut this section out of the article:

The effect of a powerful magnetic field on the human body is largely unknown. For the safety of the passengers, shielding might be needed, which would add additional weight to the train. The concept is simple, but the engineering and design aspects are complex.

I thought the effects of powerful magnetic fields on the human body *are* known -- see magnetic resonance imaging.

Of course, designers may choose to add "shielding" anyway, even though it is not a health issue:

• confining more of the magnetic field to the active area (rather than letting it leak out to where the humans are) lets the system support more cargo
• avoiding erasing the magnetic stripe on credit cards.

--DavidCary 22:37, 2 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Are we sure that this is not just author-spam? I don't think it belongs in the references section, since there is no way for a book published in 2006 to already be used as a reference for this article. I've removed edits from most every article in the Category:Shinkansen that new user User:CPHOOD added to, because the book seems largely irrelevant to the articles. A few were relevant, and this particular article is borderline. Neier 00:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I propost that the entire paragraph on Allan Silliphant should be deleted. This is a quackish futurist writer. Palmerston 21:43, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I second this, in a general overview it seems out of place and highly unnecessary. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.173.128.90 (talk • contribs) on 00:45, 18 June 2006.

I've restored UniModal again because I think the possible use of maglev in a small scale vehicle is an interesting possible use of the technology that differs significantly from the usual large scale vehicles. It's no more fanciful than the Vactrain and no more promotional than any of the other proposals listed in the article, so I don't think the reasons given for deletion outway the reasons for inclusion. --JJLatWiki 19:20, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

http://english.people.com.cn/200607/24/eng20060724_286049.html

They're planning to launch it in Dalian. I just want to bring it up to your attention; I'm not confident in my article writing ability. 70.23.128.87 06:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the recently added section on accidents, because the information about accidents can just as easily be documented elsewhere. The German Transrapid crash is already well documented in the Emsland, Germany section. As for the fire in the Shanghai line, I tried to merge it into the section about Shanghai in "existing systems", but there is none (why not?), so I just removed it. We should probably create a subsection in "existing systems" for the Shanghai line, and then we can re-insert the paragraph about the fire there (though, I'm not convinced that a minor fire with no injuries really should be documented anyway - seems like it was a relatively minor event that was only newsworthy because of the uniqueness of the Shanghai line). ATren 01:58, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's the first accident on a commercial, thus significant. The accidents section should remain. It can link to fuller details in other articles, but it should exist in this article, for the most significant accidents on Maglevs. Or you can make a List article on maglev accidents. OTherwise people won't find the information. 132.205.4.47 21:30, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No system in the world is perfect. Therefore an accident section is needed. Simple. Simply south 21:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine, but the accident description in the Transrapid section is now redundant, so I've removed it. ATren 21:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Maglev" means "whip" in Hebrew. Also, "rotem", the name of the Korean maglev company, means retama in Hebrew. Weird. Smajie 10:16, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I keep reading that Shanghai has the only commercial maglev rail between the city and its airport. Then i also read that there is something called "skytrain" which is essentially a suburban maglev system found in many cities around the world (except i think it is Bangladesh). So does that mean that there is more than one and so on? Simply south 12:03, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone who knows the reality please clean up the economics section? It seems somewhat contradictory or at least confused: all the examples given seem incredibly expensive yet this is supposedly no more expensive than building standard transportation methods. It also needs some citations for the figures given.

Are birds able to notice objects travelling at 450km/h or faster and avoid a collission with the Maglev train? Mieciu K 19:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wording like this is inappropriate for an encyclopedia, and definately doesn't belong in the introduction: Due to the lack of physical contact between the track and the vehicle, the only friction exerted is that between the vehicles and the air. If it were the case that air-resistance were only a minor form of friction, it would be appropriate to say "Consequently maglevs can potentially travel at very high speeds with reasonable energy consumption and noise levels. Systems have been proposed that operate at up to 650 km/h (404 mph), which is far faster than is practical with conventional rail transport". But this is not true. In an ordinary high speed train, most of the friction is air resistance. The body of the article doesn't even contain a single mention of "friction"! The article should find a more professional way of stating multiple points of view about the role of air resistance. Patiwat 04:59, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article notes: The Shanghai maglev cost US$1.2 billion to build. At US$6 per passenger and 20,000 passengers per day, it would take over 27 years just to repay the capital costs (including cost of financing), not accounting for track maintenance, salaries and electricity (see solar power). Why is there a link to the solar power article. Does the Shanghai maglev use solar power? Patiwat 05:05, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I did some significant work on the technology section, but the "Existing maglev systems" section needs to be reorganized. Currently it fails to mention the Shanghai airport system, which is arguably the most notable active highspeed maglev. IMO this section should be split into three parts:

- Commercially operational systems

- Prototype and proposed systems

- Obsolete or decommissioned systems Atarr 21:35, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. LuciferMorgan 00:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quite honestly, this entry reads like an entry from Popular Mechanics. Needs major cleanup. In the meantime, I removed some inaccuracies -- in particular, claims about higher efficiences of Maglev. The article quotes a comparison against the ICE trainset. Jane's World Railway figures for TGV show 18-22kw/passenger (depending on trainset model) at 300kph. This is comparable to maglev numbers claimed by Transrapid. When quoting data, should view anything from Transrapid as not unbiased. Also, should be careful in claims about top speed of steel wheel trainsets - SNCF is right now going for new world record with their TGV and may hit 600kph (goal is 550kph).

Jane's World Railway figures for TGV show 18-22kw/passenger (depending on trainset model) at 300kph. This is comparable to maglev numbers claimed by Transrapid.

I don't see how you get to that conclusion. 18 kW/passenger divided by 300 kph gives .06 kwH/passenger*km = 60 Wh/passenger*km. That's, well, a lot more. Maybe the claims are a bit off, but the principle is sound. I don't think anybody seriously questions the energetic efficiency of working Maglev trains - it's the extremely high capital costs that kill them.

In a similar vein, let's not go crazy with stories of the top speeds attainable by a TGV or Shinkansen train. Sure, they CAN break 300 mph, but try maintaining a commercially used track at the tolerances necessary to keep the trains safe at those speeds. - Atarr 23:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments after review of the Economics section:

1. The environmental consequences of Maglev need to be broken out of the Economics section and dealt with in a separate section, entitled "Environment".
2. In the Economics section it is only meaningful to consider comparable forms of transport, e.g. domestic inter city or suburban travel (bus, train, metro, tram/street car). Airports are not positioned along a chain like stops in a ground transit system.
3. The reader is meant to believe that maglev is more "competitive" than airports ("These costs compare competitively with airport construction"), which not only sounds like an original synthesis devised to advance an anti-aviation position, but is also easily disproved: the financial cost of a Hong Kong - New York maglev link is likely to be enormously greater than the cost of two airports and a few aircraft.
4. The comparison of passenger volumes (maglev vs airports vs highways) needs to:

   (a) be substantiated,

   (b) consider only transport along the same route.

   (c) not be driven by an environmental agenda seeking opportunities to classify transport as "clean" or "dirty" (environmental issues belong in the "Environment" section and must be NPOV - it's Wikipedia policy).

-- Abut 19:43, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is the person who wants to hide that Shanghai TR was made with technology of German TR. However, then I am not precocious despite a correct encyclopedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 221.190.250.145 (talk • contribs) on 17:02, 1 April 2007.