Maglev Trains - a Replacement

If you've been to an airport lately, you've probably noticed that air travel is becoming more and more congested. Despite frequent delays, still provide the fastest way to travel hundreds or thousands of miles. Passenger air travel revolutionized the transportation industry in the last century, letting people traverse great distances in a matter of hours instead of days or weeks.

The only alternatives to airplanes being feet, cars, buses, boats and conventional trains, are just too slow for today's fast-paced society. However, there is a new form of transportation that could revolutionize transportation of the 21st century the way airplanes did in the 20th century. A few countries are using powerful electromagnets to develop high-speed trains, called maglev trains. Maglev is short for magnetic levitation, which means that these trains will float over a guideway using the basic principles of magnets.


The big difference between a maglev train and a conventional train is that maglev trains do not have an engine, at least not the kind of engine used to pull typical train cars along steel tracks. The engine for maglev trains is rather inconspicuous. Instead of using fossil fuels, the magnetic field created by the electrified coils in the guideway walls and the track combine to propel the train.

If I'm not wrong, the question in your mind now must be, "How does this FUNCTION ?"
As mentioned earlier, levitation is one of the phenomenal applications of a superconductor.
The base of the train is made of superconducting magnets, which floats above an aluminium guideway. Enormous repulsion between the 2 magnets (superconducting magnet and electric current in the aluminium guideway) is produced. The current is responsible for producing the magentic field required to levitate and propogate the train. The retractable wheels are takn into the body once levitated and brought out again as the train slows down.

While maglev transportation was first proposed more than a century ago, the first commercial maglev train made its test debut in Shanghai, China, in 2002, using the train developed by German company Transrapid International. The same line made its first open-to-the-public commercial run about a year later in December of 2003. The Shanghai Transrapid line currently runs to and from the Longyang Road station at the city's center and Pudong airport. It travels at an average speed of 267 mph (430 kmh).
This was one video which fascinated me quite a lot..


Logic or Magic ?? Ofcourse logic! But thats got you thinking now :)