1977 The Longyang Road Maglev Train Station.
1991 Inside the Maglev train car. Diana’s in the blue shirt, her blond hair glowing just past the black ship’s videographer. The small black and green stripe over the door is the message board that displays the speed.
1997 The car’s message board showing 431kph or 267mph. It vacillated between 430 and 431 with some sustained short runs at 431.
2000 Here we are in the two across seating at the end of the car.
2009 The front of the train, or the back depending on which way the train is going.
Oct 20 – Shanghai, China. Today is a very straight forward day. As you know I love trains and they have a unique one here in Shanghai, the first ever non-experimental Maglev train. Made based on cutting edge German technology, the Magnetic Levitation (Maglev) Train is the state-of-art mode of transportation in Shanghai or anywhere for that matter. There are no wheels, the train floats on an electromagnetic cushion, propelled along a guideway at speeds up to 267 miles per hour, the highest ever for any operational transport on the ground. It goes 20 miles from Long Yang Lu Station to Pudong International Airport and usually completes the trip in 8 minutes. The project had an initial budget of US$1 billion.
The Germans used this project in Shanghai to perfect the technology. Construction took much longer than it was supposed to because there were several technological issues to resolve. It wound up being so expensive, much of which was eaten by the builder/manufacturer and probably written off as research and development, that they didn’t build another one anywhere for years. There are several under construction now in Europe but none are finished. The reason they are not long distance yet is that the technology is not capable of covering a distance of much more than 35-40 miles right now, another breakthrough is needed. The reason they’re building some now is that they have had a breakthrough that will make it less expensive to construct the shorter line because they learned some things from building this one.
There are two types of Maglev trains being developed and they classify them by speed, by the type of Maglev principle used or by the conductor used. Not the human conductor, the electrical conductor. This train is a high speed (200-267mph), super conducting and uses EDS-electrodynamic levitation. Other Maglev trains currently in development are low speed (60-100mph), regular conducting and use EMS-electromagnetic levitation.
To discuss the EDS and EMS electromagnetic systems would be difficult as I just barely grasp the principals involved in the two. The simple way to look at it is that we both know what happens if you put the same two poles of two magnets together. You get a repulsion reaction. However it’s not the repulsion reaction that they use. They position the magnets on the system to use the attraction principle involved in two opposite poles, it’s easier to control than the repulsion because when magnets push at one another they don’t care which way they move to get away, they just want to go. When magnets attract each other they are pulled in a specific direction and that produces a much more stable relationship that’s easier to control. Magnetism causes the forward motion of both types of trains. The difference is in how they are held above the guideway. The oddity of the situation is that the low-speed EMS system is able to be levitated at any speed or even fully stopped. The high-speed EDS system uses an induction current produced by the forward motion of the train to provide the levitation. So the faster EDS system cannot be levitated at full stop. The cars (there is no engine) have rubber wheels on which they ride until the speed is fast enough (about 93mph) for the induction current is strong enough to lift the cars off the guideway. If you want more details there are some great diagrams on the internet. The same goes for superconductors. Let’s just say that the superconductors are needed on the fast trains because the magnetic attraction has to be very strong and regular conductors just won’t provide enough attraction. It seemed odd to me that the levitation gap on the slow trains is about one-third of an inch. The gap is 4-6 inches on the high speed, super conducting EDS trains. The Singapore train is officially called the Shanghai Maglev Demonstration Train because it was the first high-speed EDS train to be built and currently it’s the first and only Maglev train of any type in commercial operation anywhere in the world.
Simply put the train is moved by an electric motor that, like all electric motors has two parts, a stator and a rotor. The rotor is attached to the shaft that spins and the stator is around the housing in which the rotor spins. In Maglev trains the motor is divided between the train and the guideway. The stator is built into the track and the “rotor” is built into the train cars. This configuration is known as a linear motor. Rather than spin in place in housing, like the electric motors we commonly know, the ‘rotor’ moves laterally along the stator to provide forward motion. Rather than spin it glides. In the low-speed Maglev system the components are reversed, that’s why they can hover when stopped.
Our bus took us from the port to the train station a trip that took a lot longer than 8 minutes and was only about 2 miles. The station looks like it was taken from the set of Star Trek, The Next Generation. It resembles a long, slightly flattened cannoli that was not entirely filled. It’s elevated so until you are on the platform you have to look up at it. Inside there’s security to go through, but easier than at the airport. Then it’s up the escalator and onto the platform. There’s no assigned seating, I guess that would be silly for and 8 minute ride. We are going out to the airport and then back into town. Usually everyone has to get off at the other end but our guide convinced them to allow us to stay in the car. If we’d had to get off we would have had to go down into the station, out and around to the entrance, back through security again to get up to the other side of the guideway for boarding.
The cars are very comfortable, six seats across, three on either side of an ample center aisle. The lower half of the car including the seats is done in shades of blue; the upper half is white and grey. Between the two at the base of the package shelf is an ocher stripe that has the seat numbers on it. They are brightly lit using indirect light, among the most pleasant train coaches I’ve ever seen. It’s a shame that they are on such a short trip.
It was amazing to me how many people panicked when they got into the car and saw that a few of the seats were facing backward. Since the train has no engine (Well to be accurate, as I mentioned earlier, it has half a motor, but no engine.) there are only cars. The ‘cars’ on each end are curved at the front (or back depending on which way you are going) to lessen wind resistance but that’s it. There are no doors between the cars so I think the train is one piece that’s articulated every so often. There are two trains, one on each guideway, that simply go back and forth without turning around so those lucky people who got forward facing seats on the way to the airport either had to move or ride backwards going back into the city. Problem is that the few backward facing seats (which will be the only forward facing seats going back) are already occupied by other people who didn’t mind riding backwards. I thought about giving up my backward facing seat to one of them but Diana and I had gotten separated when we sat down, there were no side by side seats left, and it happens that I was sitting next to a man heading to the airport. He was one of the few non-western people in the car. So I had Diana move back with me in the double seat at the end of the car near the door. I guess I didn’t mention that the row of seats at each end of the car are set against end walls and are only 2 across on each side of the aisle.
Rational Approach to Live Note: I guess there’s something to it, but riding backward has never bothered Diana or me. Stuff is either coming at you or going away from you. It seems that if the stuff is going away from you it should be less scary than coming at you. I guess I just don’t understand. I should say that this is a constant state for me. There’s so much of human behavior that makes no sense in the way that mathematics makes sense. It just is what it is. How else can you explain why, when offered a free education to grade 12, so many kids fail to complete high school. You can rationalize it, or find common factors among those who drop out but that doesn’t explain it in the way a mathematical proof explains a principal. Seems to me that many if not most ‘explanations’ in our current culture are just excuses, rationalizations or lists of common attributes, none of which explain anything.
When the doors close they pause for one minute to make sure that everything is properly set for motion and then the train starts off. The only sound you hear is a low whine that increases in pitch as you pick up speed. It’s actually very much like the speed sound effect they used on the later Star Trek TV series, not the original. The train is very smooth until you get to around 100mph and it lifts off the rubber wheels and starts to levitate. At that point it develops a tiny little floating motion. Seems likely as that’s exactly what it’s doing. The two turns are steeply banked and built do the pressure is always directly perpendicular to the car’s floor, there’s no sensation of side to side pressure at all. The cars must be pressure controlled because even at full speed there was no sensation of increased cabin pressure like some of the high speed trains in Europe, especially the Chunnel train.
I’m glad we rode it both ways because 8 minutes goes really fast when you’re having a new experience. This is a personal land speed record for me because we did hit the max 431kph or almost 268mph, one kilometer over the intended design specification. If you didn’t look out the window you would hardly have known you were moving. If you looked down at the area right next to the train it was amazing. You really couldn’t see anything, it was such a blur. When we passed the train going the other way it was on the high-speed stretch and it was just a dark blip on the windows and it was gone. At a combined speed of 536mph it’s no wonder. Not the speed of sound but getting there. All too soon we were back at the Long Yang Lu Station. I was glad to see that the US Embassy has opened a branch at the station, and by that I mean McDonald’s.
Down the escalator, out to the parking lot, on to the bus and off to the Lujiaziu area of the Pudong New District, the financial center of Shanghai. The first time we were here this was strictly farmland, now 12 years later it’s a huge business center with very tall buildings. We are going up to the observation level of the Jinmao Hyatt Building. The first 54 floors of the building are offices, floors 55 to 87 are the Hyatt Hotel. The express elevator to the observation deck moves at 9 meters per second, that’s almost 30 feet or about three floors. The trip takes less than 30 seconds and my ears popped twice on the way up.
The view is really nice from the top. When it was built is was the tallest building in Shanghai and the tallest hotel in the world. The current tallest building in Shanghai looks like a long bottle opener as it has a trapezoidal opening at the top. This opening was originally supposed to be round but the Chinese thought it looked too much like Japan’s rising sun flag so it was changed to rectangular. I called it the current tallest because under construction very close by is the soon to be tallest. I included a picture of the two yesterday. If you look directly below the center of the opening on the bottle opener you can just see a sliver of the Jinmao Building sticking out between the two. It’s just a sliver of brownish color between the two steel grey buildings. It has a jagged outline because it was designed to evoke a pagoda like feel.
We could see our ship docked on the other side of the river. The sun was fairly low in the sky so the view to the west was not good but our ship was to the east so the sun was perfect for that. The skyline in this part of town is interesting because the city has decided that every tall building has to have a different design. Instead of a bunch of Lego like square boxes each has a different character. Very nice.
The center of the Jinmao Building is two-thirds hollow from the hotel’s reception floor to the top. They’ve installed angled windows so you can look down the 33 floors to the lobby. Very cool. With binoculars you could see what people are having to drink in the lobby bar.
Back at the ship we were preparing for the sail-away. It’s nice from Singapore because we are several miles up the river from the ocean. They backed the ship up until they got to a space wide enough and free from traffic to spin the ship around to sail frontward downstream. We sailed at sunset and the sun was very red, must be significant pollution in the air here although the haze is not very heavy. We sailed by apartment buildings and shipyards on the way to the sea including a naval shipyard where a small atomic submarine was tied up. Four men came up on deck as we sailed by to watch us.
Our entertainment for the evening was the Big Screen Movie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I enjoyed it although it was basically a Kung Fu Chick Flick. The cinematography was excellent. At 2 hours it was about 20 minutes too long but the director and editor fell in love with the special effects ‘running in the air’ scenes and allowed too many of them to get into the final cut.
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