Word: guideway
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...million over budget. Detroit's project was fitful from the start. Eager to get rolling after frequent delays, the promoters broke ground in 1983, although only 3.6% of the on-site engineering had been completed. Not surprisingly, the system has been riddled with defects: 16 of the 173 horizontal guideway beams had to be removed and destroyed in 1984 because of faulty construction. Last month the contractor announced that an additional 14 beams will have to be replaced. Initially budgeted at $137.5 million, the People Mover will now cost an estimated $210 million and will not be ready until...
...Manfred Wackers, chief systems analyst for Thyssen's team, puts it, "Our system is attractive. Theirs is repulsive." Meaning: the two systems use opposite ends of the magnet to lift off. In the West German model, winglike flaps extend beneath the train and fold under a T-shaped guideway. Electromagnets in the guideway are activated by a distant control station, their polarity opposite that of electromagnets in the wings. Because of the attraction between the poles, the magnets in the guideway pull on the magnets in the wings, lifting the train...
...Japanese maglev sits in a low, troughlike guideway, paved with two rows of metal boxes containing aluminum coils. Built into the car's undercarriage are six superconducting electromagnets. When one of them passes over an unmagnetized coil, a current -- and an accompanying magnetic field -- is induced in the coil. The magnetic field in the track has the same polarity as the electromagnet and, since like poles repel, the train levitates off the guideway. As the electromagnet moves faster and faster over the coils, the magnetic force becomes more powerful, raising the car to its cruising height...
...method of propulsion is basically similar in the two systems. In both cases the train effectively rides on an electromagnetic wave. Alternating the current in a set of magnets in the guideway changes their polarity and thus the way they interact with the magnets on the train. As a result, the train is alternately pushed and pulled along. Raising the frequency of the current speeds up the movement. Says Kenji Fujie, chief engineer of JR's maglev laboratory: "We can run it beyond 1,000 k.p.h. ((620 m.p.h.)), theoretically...
...lack of friction. You ignore the fact that at high speeds much of the resistance to forward motion is air resistance, which affects levitated trains too. Finally, you state that there is "no fear of derailment on a section of bent track." However, a damaged or obstructed guideway could also cause problems in magnetically levitated trains...