Word: training
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...enough to say we used to have Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and now we have Michael Douglas and Cher. If anything has been lessened at Wrigley Field, it is probably something quite small, certainly nothing to cry over, only a momentary feeling of letdown, like missing the train...
Viewed head on and from a distance, the train of the future looks like an overgrown bobsled on stilts. As it approaches on its track, 23 ft. above the ground, it fails almost all the tests of recognition: there are no engines, no wheels, no rails. Most astonishing of all, there is no clatter, no rumble, no screech. As the train hurtles by, there is only a vast whoosh, the sound of air being parted by a vehicle traveling at close to 300 m.p.h...
...train is called a maglev, a contraction of magnetic levitation. The vehicle lacks that litany of trainlike properties because it floats in the air, supported by the force of immensely powerful magnets. Instead of rolling on rails, it actually flies, using magnets for propulsion. Unhindered by any friction except wind resistance, the maglev can attain speeds unheard of in ordinary land travel -- the fastest conventional train, France's TGV (train a grande vitesse), hits only 186 m.p.h. One maglev is already running: a short, slow-moving (25 m.p.h.) line in Britain that shuttles people from Birmingham's airport...
...stopped using superconductors in 1979, convinced that the technology was out of reach. Thus, if the Japanese can get their design into marketable shape soon, they could build a lead in the vital field of superconductors and establish a strong grip on the future of high-speed long-distance train travel...
Another major difference between the two designs is the way the trains levitate. As 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...