China tests new maglev train

BEIJING, China (AP) -- China successfully tested a locally made magnetic levitation train, the first time the country has achieved the feat without using foreign technology, state media reported Monday...

...The test train can hold 60 people and travel up to 100 miles per hour, Xinhua reported, citing Zhang Kunlun, deputy director of the School of Electrical Engineering at the Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu...

...The cost of the Chinese maglev train is low, and it is suitable for urban traffic, Zhang said.

"The successful test of the train shows that China has mastered the technology of low-to-medium speed maglev trains," he was quoted as saying...

CNN

Maybe this point has been discussed elsewhere on this board, but... if it doesn't have metal wheels rolling on metal rails, is it a train? From a functional point of view, it's a train, yeah, but from a railfan's?

Ask the guys over in Aichi who are drooling over the Yamanashi Maglev (JR's experimental Maglev trains). Although, I, personally, consider them trains. Do you consider a monorail to be a non-train, just because it has a single rail and sometimes rubber tires instead of two steel rails and steel wheels? Maglev is just the next evolution of railway technology.

At least that's my opinion, whatever that's worth.


For those unfamiliar with the Yamanashi Maglev...

Information from an Aichi Prefectural site...
http://www.pref.aichi.jp/kotsu/rinia/4_e.html

The Japan Railways RTRI (Railway Technical Research Institute)
http://www.rtri.or.jp/rd/maglev/html/en ... ine_E.html

train could be applied to any vechicle with more than 1 carriage . thats why they have road trains in Australia , and we have trains of thought .

On the other hand , maglevs do nothing for me .