taking off into the wind and surf (the ekranoplan) is a serious systems design draw back. The "captured" train track takes up twice as much real estate as a railed train. This is cute, and new & fancy, but I am questioning the practicality.
Looks like the ground effects train is an idea competing with maglev, which would thus have similar "footprint" characteristics, rather than with railed trains, no? And even with railed trains, the high-speed sections tend to have bigger footprints than the low-speed sections, in practical terms. When you want to go truly fast on rails you have to get rid of the level crossings, tracks right next to buildings, etc.
Maglevs work great in the lab, but the real world is full of blown garbage, bird poop, oxides, and stray bits of conductive wire that can really mess up the small air gap - not to mention the massive power consumption. The captured train tracks, in any except the MOST pristine environments (not China, not India, not most of Eastern Europe, the US, etc) will also gather debris that a railed train would simply run over or sweep aside.
I concur with your footprint perspective, for truly high speed. I guess I am just stuck in the US slowwwww speed paradigm.
3 comments:
taking off into the wind and surf (the ekranoplan) is a serious systems design draw back. The "captured" train track takes up twice as much real estate as a railed train. This is cute, and new & fancy, but I am questioning the practicality.
Looks like the ground effects train is an idea competing with maglev, which would thus have similar "footprint" characteristics, rather than with railed trains, no? And even with railed trains, the high-speed sections tend to have bigger footprints than the low-speed sections, in practical terms. When you want to go truly fast on rails you have to get rid of the level crossings, tracks right next to buildings, etc.
Maglevs work great in the lab, but the real world is full of blown garbage, bird poop, oxides, and stray bits of conductive wire that can really mess up the small air gap - not to mention the massive power consumption. The captured train tracks, in any except the MOST pristine environments (not China, not India, not most of Eastern Europe, the US, etc) will also gather debris that a railed train would simply run over or sweep aside.
I concur with your footprint perspective, for truly high speed. I guess I am just stuck in the US slowwwww speed paradigm.
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