Japan's levitating maglev train reaches 500km/h | Hacker News Reader

Japan's levitating maglev train reaches 500km/h

bbc.com

92 pointsmwc51 comments

On their 27 mile test track. Which is too bad since at 300mph that would be a 4 minute ride :-) I expect it spends all of its time accelerating and decelerating. I suspect such trains will only be practical in the 'real' world by having them in some sort of fully enclosed track. It doesn't have to be a solid tunnel but something that keeps out birds and other debris from the area. Nothing like hitting a pigeon or catching a flying bit of branch at 300MPH, hurricanes put 2 x 4s through houses 2/3rds that speed so that would be a challenge.

That said the only other remarkable thing was how shaky the video was at 500km/h if the train was really moving around that much it wouldn't be too sustainable. One of the amazing things for me on the TGV was how smoothly it rode even going 200km/h.

Nothing like hitting a pigeon or catching a flying bit of branch at 300MPH, hurricanes put 2 x 4s through houses 2/3rds that speed so that would be a challenge.

At 250 mph, the TransRapid TR-08 simply vaporized any biological object it hame across little-to-no-damage to the vehicle (but there was a mess to clean up). A large object can be an issue, but small objects will likely be pushed aside by the pressure wave ahead of the vehicle.

That said the only other remarkable thing was how shaky the video was at 500km/h

The vehicle is still undergoing testing, the facility may not have figured out or implemented the ride-quality algorithms yet.

> The vehicle is still undergoing testing, the facility may not have figured out or implemented the ride-quality algorithms yet.

The Maglev train between Shanghai airport and the city is perfectly stable at 500 km/h if I remember correctly. Japan is very, very late for Maglev technology.

In Japan, there are two independently developed maglev trains. One is HSST by Japan Airlines and the other, which is more well-known, is SCMaglev by the Central Japan Railway Company.

The development of the latter started in 1969, and Miyazaki test track had regularly hit 517 km/h (321 mph) by 1979 but, after an accident that destroyed the train, a new design was decided upon. -- Wikipedia

I'd say Japan got into the technology quite early...

I rode the Shanghai airport maglev a couple of hours ago. I glanced up at the speed display a few times during the middle of the journey, and it was always within 290-301 km/h.

The journey time was something like 8 minutes, from the airport to Longyang Road.

You have to remember that the specs of the two trains are quite different, with the elevation above the track being much greater in the case of Japan (as a buffer against earthquakes).

The maglev to Shanghai airport is not a pleasant ride. Try the Shanghai-Hangzhou high speed rail. Not maglev but does 300 km/h and the ride is smooth as butter.

If I recall correctly, the Shanghai one topped out at around 478km/h... They actually run at that speed only a couple times per day.

431 km/h. I've ridden it, and it vibrates, for lack of a better word, disturbingly; you can really feel that it's pushing the envelope of what's possible. Not a big deal for a 7-minute ride, but would be a bit annoying to put up with for an hour.

I think the proposal is to tunnel under the Japan Alps from the outskirts of the Kanto (where Tokyo is) to the outskirts of the Kansai and Osaka. The tunnel is mostly required because Japan's mountainous geography is not friendly to straight corridors, but it means fewer birds and sticks will be a benefit.

You mean 200mph(320km/h)? 200km/h probably isn't offically a high-speed train.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV

Yes, total metric fail. Sigh.

Yes, the Shanghai maglev is about the same speed and distance, and it does spend almost the entire trip accelerating and decelerating. You get to 430km/h for maybe less than a minute. Average speed would be a more meaningful number to compare high speed trains with.

>That said the only other remarkable thing was how shaky the video was at 500km/h if the train was really moving around that much it wouldn't be too sustainable.

I wondered the same, but have a feeling some of the shakiness was due to having zoomed in quite a bit on a camera without any kind of image stabilisation. In the video, the image of the speed indicator is very shaky but then you realise it is zoomed in on the screen at the other end of the train car. So maybe it's not quite -that- shaky as it may seem.

Since the front of the train is the only part exposed to a 300mph impact, couldn't that be mitigated by the material and shape of the nose? Since it is already designed to deflect air efficiently, I imagine any bird in its path would also be deflected. May not be great for the bird, but I don't think the train would be hurt.

>I suspect such trains will only be practical in the 'real' world by having them in some sort of fully enclosed track.

Reminds me of something[1]... :-)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop

Tgv beat that speed many years ago, on rails : http://youtu.be/8skXT5NQzCg

Maglev also beat that speed many years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_veh...

In 2003 the Japanese maglev test train running on the same test track reached 581 km/h. It was not until 2007 that the TGV reached 574 km/h.

Better yet, IIRC TGV achieved 380km/h 35 years ago.

How do the engineers account for earthquakes on these trains? I could see it being quite disastrous if one were to occur while this train travelling at 500km/h. Also I wonder what the efficiency is given that the train needs to push through the thick atmosphere at 0 altitude compared to airplanes which fly at their top speed in a very sparse atmosphere.

Thanks to the Shinkansen, Japan's had plenty of practice with this. Their "UrEDAS" (theoretically "Urgent Earthquake Detection and Alarm System", although this is just a backronym for yuredasu "starts to shake") monitors both P and S waves and brings trains to a halt automatically, and is considered the gold standard for this kind of thing. In the 50 years they've been running trains, there's been one (1) derailment due to an earthquake, with zero fatalities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Earthquake

http://sdr.co.jp/papers/13wcee_uredas.pdf

A network of seismometers to detect foreshocks all over the islands and a system to send an automated stop signal to trains. It worked in 2011 when all the high speed trains were successfully stopped ~10 seconds before the 9.0 mag quake hit:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/06/16/national/shinkan...

When the large japanese quake occurred I remember reading an article about how the Japanese Shinkansen have an automated system that will put on the brakes in the case of an earthquake. Within 2 or 5 seconds if I remember correctly.

I am sitting on the Sakura Shinkansen headed towards Shin Osaka as I read this.

Deleted comment

Well, to be honest maglevs aren't common because they are expensive to build. The technology really isn't new. The maglev to the Shanghai airport is already 10 years old.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train

It goes 268mph(431km/h).

China seems to be building low-speed maglev trains too.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR

110 km/h (68 mph)

These types of maglevs would be great in or near cities. You could travel the length of Manhattan to get to JFK in 15 minutes.

I think there's a low-speed maglev almost ready for use in South Korea.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#Incheon_Airport_maglev

Japan's had a low-speed maglev running since 2005:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linimo

Although to be honest I've never quite understood the point of a low-speed maglev, all the expense and drawbacks of fiddly new technology (Linimo can't operate if it's too windy...) without any of primary benefit (blazing speed!).

The Shanghai maglev is quite useless since you have to take a slow subway to catch it. Better/faster to just grab a cab and go direct for just 2x more.

You should have explained the politics that crippled it. There were lots of protests and the maglev couldn't be built farther into the city.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/01/12/us-china-maglev-pr...

No idea what you are referring to, Reuters is blocked in china.

The radiation thing is probably just face cover, it is just too expensive to build into the city.

It depends where you live. A taxi from my apartment to the airport is about 145RMB and takes about 45 minutes. Subway plus maglev takes 60 minutes, and costs less than 50RMB (maglev is 40RMB if you have a subway card).

Line 2 goes all the way to the airport now. The connection is easier also. If you are worried about money....

True. I'm happy to pay 40 RMB to avoid standing up for half an hour (and getting home half an hour earlier), but not the extra 100 RMB on top to save another 15 minutes (and contribute to global warming) :)

It was supposed to run all the way to Beijing as originally envisioned. Too expensive, though.

According to your link the maglev at Shanghai also achieved 500km/h on a test run...

I think what's more interesting is that the Chinese have achieved 302mph (only ~9mph less than the maglev) with wheeled trains: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRH380A#Test

The french has the conventional rail record with ~574kph (357 mph) [1].

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV_world_speed_record

You should mention that the train was junk after that, and the rail track too. Very expensive marketing.

Perhaps I should add that the maglev train I've ride at Shanghai was already that fast, and it was in commercial operation since 2004. That was 10 years ago. So no, I don't see how this is news.

No, you didn't go that fast. It's 50mph slower. Japan is going into production with this train in 10 years. I wouldn't simply right off this as not being progress. Most passenger trains in America probably don't even average 50mph. It would turn Boston to NYC, or NYC to DC into a 45 minute commute.

> ..production with this train in 10 years

Another 10 years? That means it goes into operation in 2024? That's 20 years after the Chinese built one.

Yes, I'm not sure where you're going with that. Japan already has a bullet train. Here's what Wikipedia has:

"JR Central aims to begin commercial maglev service between Tokyo and Nagoya in the year 2025 with the full track between Tokyo and Osaka finalized in 2045." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#Japan

Ugh! With all these down voting, it makes it hard for low karma people to voice opinion. I'll just shut up >:(

I think it is just a language problem. I presume you are talking about this train: http://www.smtdc.com/en/gycf3.html which is, according to the web site, still just running on a test track with a max speed of 430 km/H, which is a little bit more than 43mph slower than the Japanese demonstration. It looks like the maiden voyage of that test train was 2002 and it is still not a "production" train, no doubt owing to the challenges of putting a maglev train into production.

But the article wasn't about "maglev trains" in general, it was about a specific one. And so the comparison is moot except to compare how each system has approached the challenges of building and/or productizing such fast trains.

When I read your comments I felt like it was a Chinese boast/Japanese putdown not an actual comment. As I understand it there is some animosity between Japan and China, and with that understanding it felt to me that your comments were simply being mean rather than adding to the conversation.

So given that you have first hand experience with the Shanghai train, do you have any insight into what has kept it from being deployed into a production capacity? Articles like this one in Time (http://content.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,3148...) portray it as a sort of entertainment ride, like a roller coaster might be in an amusement park.

The Shanghai maglev is 19 miles long. However, it leaves you at an inconvenient spot, and another 20 minute subway ride outside of the center of the city. This is discussed on the Wikipedia page:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train

My understanding is that it was suppose to terminate closer to the center but people were afraid of the magnetic fields and protested.

Shanghai authorities are not really known to let popular opinion sway their urban development programs, so I suspect there is a tad bit more to it.

The Shanghai maglev is german technology (Transrapid). The development began around 1969. Siemens and ThyssenKrupp were mainly looking for a demonstration of the technological capabilities as there was no real world application, mainly due to costs, besides it being ready for application since 1991.

Caltrain passenger trains reach top speeds of 79mph:

http://www.caltrain.com/riderinfo/safety_security/Safety_Tip.... html

Now, I know you said "average speed", and that's probably a lot less depending on which train is running (limited stop, express, "bullet", local).

The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) "trains" also top out at about 80mph but average only 33mph:

http://www.bart.gov/about/history/facts

If you look closely, even express trains don't have a high average speed. The companies like to boast that they're fast but it's usually only for a couple miles of track.

Wow, that is really a pity.

We have trains here in most of western europe that do about 200mph, but most long-distance travel is at 150mph. So yours are really WTF-worthy, especially considering how dense the population on the east coast of the US or around the SF bay area is.

(Trains I’m referring to: ICE 3, TGV, Alvia, Railjet, etc.)

I can't even imagine how great it would be traveling from San Jose to San Francisco in ~10-15 minutes (no stops).

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