Maglev link for Glasgow and Edinburgh?

QUOTE (neil_s_wood @ 20 Jun 2007, 02:27) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Maglev for Scotrail? However will we get a model of this if it goes ahead? Will this be the shape of things to come? If it does, then does this mean that model rail could go from three rail to two rail to no rails at all? How would we power a maglev model?
Judging by all the other BBC articles about councils 'considering' maglev trains I think it is more a case of 'dreaming' than 'considering'... Maglev is completely separate from conventional rail in not only technology but infrastructure and really is as irrelevant as aircraft I think. At £2bn I would love to know where the money is coming from...the sad truth is that domestic flights between the two cities are more practical and cheaper if we ignore environmental impact, as most people will continue to do.

A maglev model is a challenge - one could use air jets but this would require some kind of generator and be noisy and probably bulky, and of course regular holes in the track/runway. Induction could transfer power to the maglev model from under the runway to power lights on the model, but using maglev technology in minaturised form is a very long way off in the future I think. A simple superconductor and magnets on the maglev model is not practical because you need liquid nitrogen/hydrogen/helium depending upon the superconductor temperature. One day supeconductors may get up towards room temperature and then they become very useful...until then impossible for modellers!

I guess the best method is to cheat and use concealed wheels underneath - as the sides of the maglev curve around the track they would be concealed from the side and so not obvious to an observer. The runway-maglev gap distance is very small anyway so this would be easy to pull off, just look at the picture above - there could be wheels on the Shanghai one and you wouldn't know... ...apart from the smell of burning!

Scale speed of 500 km/h in 1:160 scale is 87cm/s - probably possible though!

Goedel

What's the current time between the two cities?
Maybe in a modelling sense a return to clockwork?

QUOTE What's the current time between the two cities?

47 minutes stopping at Falkirk and Haymarket and one other station (it varies which one). Apparently can be done in 39 mins non stop using a Turbostar.

Maglev will never happen

No one will sanction building a concrete eyesore between Glasgow and Edinburgh, even if the M8 were to be followed. There is still the need to create special stations in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

More investment needs to be made in Glasgow- Edinburgh- Perth -Dundee- Aberdeen-Inverness journeys not just Glasgow Edinburgh.

Strongly suspect this is a diversion away from SNP cancelling Edinburgh Tram and Rail -Airport schemes (probably with Waverley line next)

Russell

Traveling Falkirk to Edinburgh stopping at Polmont, Haymarket and Waverley Market, on average twenty five minutes. Falkirk to Glasgow Queen Street, stopping at Croy and Glasgow Queen Street, on average of twenty five minutes - slowest part of the journey is entering tunnel into Queen Street station Glasgow.
I agree that Maglev system will not happen during the next two decades if at all - cost being to prohibitive.

QUOTE (pedromorgan @ 27 Jun 2007, 08:08) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Did you hear about the chinese "engineers" getting cought in the workshops of the shanghi maglev??!!
I bet that in a few years the chinese will mysteriously have invented their own maglev system.
They're the very worst of technology pirates! I recall they ordered a train and one kilometer of track from a German company for somewhere in China years ago. Of course once it arrived they just copied everything and abracadabra...countrywide railway built by cheap uneducated labour and 100 years of painstaking technological advance snapped up...lazy but effective and who having travelled to 'the West' would not want to copy what we have back at home? This is of course not to say that we invented everything and didn't steal it! Hats off to the Chinese for inventing stirrups, gunpowder, pasta etc. but if only they weren't such brazen thieves...can't they be discreet like the English (used to be)?

Goedel