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Maglev China on Track to Win 600 Kmh “Pace Race”

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Technical proposals for an magnetically levitated train (maglev), passed by an expert review board in Qingdao in the past few days, have given China the go ahead to fast track its ambitions of realising the world’s first long-distance, ultra high-speed train line.

There has been something of a “Pace Race” developing between several countries in the last few years, with the winner being the first to put a man in a train going faster than 600 kilometres per hour. 25 January saw China take an important step toward being triumphant.

The milestone is but one achievement necessary to satisfy “key technologies of high-speed magnetic levitation transportation system”, work that is being carried out, in the main, by CRRC Qingdao Sifang Locomotive & Rolling Stock Co., Ltd. A prototype train is expected to be rolled out later this year.

Trailing China in second place is the Japanese. As long ago as April 2015, their Lo Series train made a test run, with 49 railway employees on board, that reached 603 kmh. That should put Japan in the lead, if not the outright winner of the Pace Race, but the project has many running scared amid cost estimates for building the line between Tokyo and Nagoya put at over US$100 billion.

Not out of it entirely, are the Germans, with their maglev effort Transrapid International, jointly developed by Siemens and ThyssenKrupp, that can travel at speeds of up to 550 kmh. The Shanghai Maglev is in fact the first real-world incarnation of the Transrapid, a stark reminder of the German technology and engineering prowess that helped China on its modernisation drive.

Elsewhere, the Swiss are hoping to have a Transrapid of their own, with lines planned for between Bern and Zurich, Zurich and Winterthur plus Lausanne and Geneva.

At present, there are five maglev train systems in operation and open for public use in the world, with three of them in China; the Shanghai Maglev, Line s1 of the Beijing Metro, the Changsha Maglev, the Linimo near Nagoya in Japan and the Incheon Airport Maglev in South Korea.

Despite its futuristic nature, the technology dates back to the 1980s, with the world’s first commercial maglev being a low-speed shuttle that ran from Birmingham International Airport to the city’s railway station in the UK between 1984 and 1995. Prior to the Shanghai Maglev entering service in 2004, there was only one other magnetic levitated train system; the M-Bahn in Berlin, Germany, from 1989 to 1991.

China’s long-distance, high-speed maglev project was officially launched by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology under its 13th Five-Year Plan in February of 2016.

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