On a train at 502kph.....wow!

bingham67 · 7 Feb 2006 at 03:06

Also because it will cost to much and if was to replace underground would have to relay whole of underground tunnels i dont think so.

pyro · 7 Feb 2006 at 03:19

Killerkebab said:
Railway lines are not good enough to take a huge train going at 500km/h.

Isn't that a maglev train? As in magnetic levitation? So they don't really have tracks pre say, but anyway. Japanese guys use a lot of public transport I remember reading on BBC one day how 3/4 of the country use public transport every day :eek:

Imagine the infrastructure...

Craig321 · 7 Feb 2006 at 04:02

Spit said:
Check it out...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2926400396387878713

They have all the best stuff in Japan.

Wow, I'd love to go in that

Duke · 7 Feb 2006 at 07:57

That maglev train was nuts

platypus · 7 Feb 2006 at 08:18

Shame we won't see those in our lifetime, mightily impressive though. Worth a visit to Japan alone.

Melm0 · 7 Feb 2006 at 08:28

Malc said:
Doesn't it use a superconducting material that at low temperatures (i.e 90 Kelvin), maintained by liquid nitrogen, expells all magnetic fields.

This website explains it better

http://www.fys.uio.no/super/levitation/

It does indeed! I did my AS Physics coursework on superconductors and mentioned the MagLev train

clv101 · 7 Feb 2006 at 08:36

stokefan said:
why can't we do that?

'cos we're too busy spending billions of aviation infrastructure with no future when we should be spending that money on improving the rail network.

AJUK · 7 Feb 2006 at 08:51

It is quite depressing that Britain invented the train. :rolleyes:

Resting and laurels springs to mind.

Bri · 7 Feb 2006 at 08:59

That's immensely cool

Fusion · 7 Feb 2006 at 09:07

clv101 said:
when we should be spending that money on improving the rail network.

We are

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel_Rail_Link

clv101 · 7 Feb 2006 at 09:25

Fusion said:
clv101 said:

when we should be spending that money on improving the rail network.

Click to expand...

We are

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel_Rail_Link

See this article:

Axe to fall on rail network
Dozens of branch lines and secondary routes could shut, in what would be the biggest rethink of the network since the Beeching report in the 1960s, which led to the closure of 4,000 miles of railway and nearly half the nation's stations. Loss-making services would be transferred on to buses, as a means of reducing the £6bn-a-year subsidy.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/article341731.ece

Interestingly enough the reason for the proposed cutbacks is the £6bn-a-year subsidy. Well UK aviation gets a larger subsidy than that and government plans for aviation expansion will increase that subsidy further.

We need these billions to go into electrifying the mainline tracks that aren't already electrified. Introduce metro systems like Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle into other cities and put back some of the track and stations that were removed in the 1960's.

Visage · 7 Feb 2006 at 10:00

Killerkebab said:
Even better reason for us not to have one, unless the taxpayers are going to be shown a £25bn+ bill

Indeed. Lets face it - theonly thing that angers people more on these forums than Muslims is Tax.

Its all well and good saying 'Wowo, lets get some of those over here', but when the WCML upgrade costs north of 10 billion quid for 140mph running, you can only imagine the cost of a system thats twice as fast.

I'd be surprised if you got any change out of 250 billion quid for a London->Midlands->Scotland 500km/h link, and even half a trillion wouldnt seem out of the question.

Fusion · 7 Feb 2006 at 10:25

clv101 said:
See this article:

Could shut. It's only one of many proposals. There's a big difference between what may happen, and what is happening.

clv101 · 7 Feb 2006 at 10:33

I'm quite aware it's a proposal... my point is exactly that, that the official proposals for transport are less trains and more planes. This in my opinion is a mistake.

( |-| |2 ][ $ · 7 Feb 2006 at 10:37

I'm meant to be designing one which we could use in the UK, today. Got hang over tho, so it'll have to work tomorrow.

steinooo · 7 Feb 2006 at 11:01

Killerkebab said:
Railway lines are not good enough to take a huge train going at 500km/h.

The French have got their TGV up to 505km/h last I remembered, but the entire TGV network won't stretch that far. They max out at 300 on most of the lines, if I recall correctly.

Japans railway lines are top notch though, so I think they'll have more luck getting 500km/h over a larger portion of their rail network.

yea but why are Japan's tracks so much better than ours?

It annoys me how we pioneered rail (didnt we?) and havn't kept on top of it, and now look at the state of the rail services!

Freefaller · 7 Feb 2006 at 11:02

bingham67 said:
wow that is amazing of wees all over the uk trains.

Sheer speed of it when it went past.

To be fair most trains wee over UK trains.

That's very impressive... Does anyone know how much power is required to run it?

Oracle · 7 Feb 2006 at 11:07

Wow, that is something special, they've always had the bullet trains tho havent they. Unfortunatley this country's rail infrastructure could NEVER support that kind of technology without total re-design.

Freefaller · 7 Feb 2006 at 11:09

stokefan said:
yea but why are Japan's tracks so much better than ours?

More money invested probably.

The UK has a habit of just patching up things when are broken or worn instead of revamping if from scratch. We haven't got the money, or the money that is invested is used for desiging a cutting edge fining system for customers.

Also Japan's industry is a still fairly "new" so has been able to start from scratch a lot more easily - which I think they did, but I'm not sure about that.

theleg · 7 Feb 2006 at 11:11

Remember that japanese infrastructre is pretty new..I dunno how often the british rail system gets upgraded but japan started off from pretty much scratch 50 odd years ago...with the help of a lot of american money.