Going off track: How Britain invented the Maglev then let it slide | Hacker News Reader

Going off track: How Britain invented the Maglev then let it slide

thelongandshort.org

38 pointsbilifuduo20 comments

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"Birmingham isn't like other British cities – it fetishises the technical and promotes the new."

That's one potentially contestable way to view Birmingham

Birmingham has a good history with technology. Look at the Lunar Society.

A hundred years ago maybe

Here's Telly Savalas' point of view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoHVO1eSMFc

I know maglevs look cool and all, but there are quite practical reasons why they didn't pan out. One thing people tend to overlook is that regular rail lines are much more versatile. Regular rail can handle a variety of loads - the French high speed rail system also handles postal mail for instance. If you are building rail lines you already have a ton of kit that can use them - such as all the service machinery. Build a maglev and you can throw away all your expensive line maintenance vehicles.

MagLev did pan out though, just not in Britain. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train

did it really pan out if there are so few of them?

Depends on what you mean by "panned out". The tech works, but society isn't interested in trains since it was developed and matured.

We pushed cars, freeways, etc. Not just in the US. Other countries followed along for their own reasons.

It's like nuclear; the tech can work fine. We just don't have the interest.

I blame lobbying against public utilities, personally. Decades of pro-privatization rhetoric, getting people to buy-in on their own vehicle, versus pub-trans.

The Shanghai Maglev isn't much more than a novelty at this point. Originally it was a somewhat useful way to travel to the airport instead of a bus, but now that the metro runs there that seems to be the better option (you don't have to deal with the maglev transfer or with buying another ticket). They had planned to extend it to Hangzhou, but the high speed rail between Shanghai and Hangzhou ended those plans.

The question of why it didn't take off is answered in the article, albeit in parentheses: "(Maglev is indisputably more expensive upfront than high-speed rail.)"

Also mentioned: "The first time it snowed, all hell broke loose!" Although later on, the article alludes to the ingenious solution to this problem which was devised elsewhere in the world - enclose it in a tunnel.

EDIT: Although according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev "Maglev trains are little affected by snow, ice, severe cold, rain or high winds".

No mention of the low-speed maglev being built in Beijing:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2016-11/28/content_275...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR

Haven't read the article yet, but I admire the title.

The colorful intermediate text passages have so bad kerning that they're nigh impossible to read.

The UK has a proud history of doing things and then failing to capitalise on it. Examples:

• Black Arrow [0] - orbital satellite launcher, cancelled almost on the day of the first successful launch.

• Miles M.52 [1] - could have beaten the Bell-X1 to supersonic flight by a year, if it hadn't been cancelled.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_M.52

Whoever wrote that description of my home city evidently last visited in 1816.

I thought it was funny recently that people were pleased Spielberg chose Birmingham as the perfect post-apocalyptic wasteland for shooting Ready Player One.

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/film-news/look-stev...

Not sure I would have been happy about that...

It's maglev! It's not supposed to slide, it's supposed to float!

It has to slide (more like roll along) before it can float, doesn't it? It doesn't take off like a chopper, you know?

M###ie T###cher

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