Magnetic Levitation Trains Magnetic levitation or maglev for short is the method of making a means of trans port, more

frequently than not a train, hover over the 'track' and travel by the use of magnets. Magnetic levitation has the potential to move trains more quick ly and more quietly than traditional wheel-based trains. Surprisingly, most of t he power consumed is used to conquered wind resistance at high speed, not to hol d the train hovering in mid-air. You would be forgiven for thinking that maglev is new technology, but in fact th e first American patent was filed by a German inventor in America in 1907. It th en took 74 years before the first commercial maglev train came into service in 1 984 in Birmingham, United Kingdom. However, that particular installation became fairly unreliable and it was taken out of service in 1995. The fastest recorded speed of a maglev train under test circumstances was in Jap an in 2003. It ran at an impressive 361 mph, but that is merely 3.5 mph faster t han France's TGV, which has been in service for four decades. The TGV's top spee d of 357.2 mph was beaten by the Chinese Harmony Express in 2009. However, these latter day wheeled services are founded on tried and tested techn ology on which hundreds of billions of dollars has been spent over nearly 200 ye ars. If more attention and investment were lavished on the maglev, it would surp ass conventional train speeds fairly easily. The most successful maglev train in operation these days runs to Shanghai airpor t like the British one ran to Birmingham Airport. However, the similarity betwee n the two stops there. The British maglev travelled at up to 26 mph, whereas the Chinese, but German built, maglev runs at a peak speed of 160 mph. Much of the early research and development was carried out in Britain by Profess or Eric Laithwaite from after the Second World War to 1973, but Germany is the f oremost influence on the maglev train now, even though Germany is working closel y with the Chinese and the Japanese to advance the technology. One of the main stumbling blocks for maglev trains is infrastructure. Maglev tra ins are incompatible with conventional rail rack so they have nowhere to go. Lay ing new maglev track is not hideously costly, but it is dear and would involve h aving two sets of incompatible rails running alongside each other for several de cades, which would obviously take up twice as much land. Having said that, some progress was made in designing rails that could be used b y both technologies but the endeavour was allowed to fall fallow. So, the story of magnetic levitation trains began with a German inventor more th an a hundred years ago and although they lost track of the project for thirty ye ars or so during and after the War, German scientists and engineers are back at the forefront of this fascinating technology, which will surely replace our trad itional train and track technologies in the future. If the electricity required to run them were manufactured by methods other than fossil fuel, these very quiet trains would go a long way to decreasing pollution in both inner cities and the countryside. Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is pres ently involved with <a href="http://trainsetsforkids.com/american-flyer-train-se ts.html">train sets for kids</a>. If you would like to know more about <a href=" http://trainsetsforkids.com">train sets for kids</a>, please go over to our webs ite for some special offers.