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P R O J E C T Sdesign and construction / technical / project management

Magnetically levitating trains are faster and quieter than high-speed trains, use less energy and take up a

35projectspmdr 31/8/10 15:40 Page 38

It’s 2026 and Britain’s new high-speed railnetwork has just been completed.You steponto a train in London and 55 minutes later

step off it in Manchester. Of course, you couldhave also left at Birmingham, 28 minutesearlier, but now you are in Manchester youcan spend another 18 minutes to get to Leedsor alternatively 17 minutes for Liverpool. Ifyou had had a more ambitious onwardjourney, you could also have got off the trainat three airports: Heathrow, BirminghamInternational or Liverpool.

The way things are going, though, thescenario is going to be rather different.According to current plans for high-speed raillinks, the journey will take 1hr 40 minutes toget to Manchester, which is 28 minutes lessthan it takes now. And you can forget abouttravelling on to Leeds or Liverpool, or getting off at Heathrow or Liverpool airportsbecause the high-speed track finishes at

lot less space. So why is this technology still waiting on the platform? Thomas Lane blows his whistle

T O M A N C H E S T E R IN 55 MINUTES?

BUILDING MAGAZINE 03.09.2010

projects / maglev trains / 39

35projectspmdr 31/8/10 15:40 Page 39

Birmingham and there won’t be a stop atHeathrow.

Actually, the first scenario isn’t fantasy butis based on using magnetically levitatingtrains or “maglev”, rather than conventionalEurostar-style high-speed trains. Accordingto the proponents of maglev, it costs onlyhalf as much to build so we can have a muchbigger network for the same money. The factthat the only commercially operationalmaglev service in the world is a 19-mile tracklinking Shanghai with its airport hasn’tdeterred Alan James, who heads UKUltraspeed, the body promoting maglev andthe alternative routes. “Maglev is faster,better and greener than high-speed rail,” hesays. “There is no better place than Britainfor maglev; it’s a country with virtually noinvestment in high-speed rail so we canleapfrog all the other countries that haveinvested in high-speed rail systems.” IsJames living in the realms of fantasy or ismaglev a serious contender for a new UKhigh-speed network?

For a start, James has some heavyweightpartners such as Transrapid, a joint venturebetween Siemens and ThyssenKrup, the

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Central Manchester

Central Leeds

Manchester AirportBirmingham Airport/NEC

Central Birmingham North West Midlands

M1/M25 P&R

To Channel Tunnel

To Channel Tunnel

Low Speed Rail to Heathrow

Interchange station Old Oak Common

Direct link toHeathrow

HS2 Birmingham Airport/NEC

St Pancras

St Pancras

Euston

Stratford HS1

HS1Stratford

MAGLEV

Liverpool

Central Birmingham

John Lennon Airport

HOW MAGLEV SHRINKS THE UK

HIGH SPEED 2

Overleaf: The only commercially operational maglev in the

world, a 19-mile track connecting Shanghai to its airport

Below: A maglev train on Transrapid’s test track in

Germany. This system has been used in Shanghai and

could be used in the UK if the government backs maglev

35projectspmdr 31/8/10 15:41 Page 40

BUILDING MAGAZINE 03.09.2010

projects / maglev trains / 41

100 110 120 130 140

Manchester

Low speed rail to Liverpool

Leeds

company that built the Shanghai system.Ryder has developed concept designs forstations and Faithful + Gould has crunchedthe numbers. So UK Ultraspeed doesn’texactly lack credibility.

The technology was rejected by the Labourgovernment James sensed which way thewind was blowing and talked to the Toriesbefore the election; he got their commitmentto put high-speed rail out to competition. Ina letter written in November 2008, thenshadow transport secretary PhillipHammond said: “A Conservative government,if elected, welcome bids to deliver the high-speed link by consortiums proposing allrelevant technologies, including maglev.”

The figures for maglev sound veryimpressive. The trains travel at speeds of upto 311mph as opposed to high-speed rail’s204mph. Maglev trains also change speedfaster: they can accelerate up to 200mph in athird of the time it takes a conventional high-speed train, and can stop much morequickly too, which means each stop has lesseffect on overall journey times. According toJames, a maglev train uses three-fifths of theenergy of a conventional high-speed trainwhen travelling at 200mph.

Maglev trains are also quieter as there is nophysical contact between train and track andthey can go up 1:10 gradients rather than the1:25 limit for trains with wheels. This makesgetting across the Pennines betweenManchester and Leeds financially viable asno tunnelling is needed. Also, maglev trainscan go round much sharper corners, whichmeans more flexibility when planning routes.

According to Ian Metcalf, Faithful + Gould’sregional director, who worked on the costsfor UK Ultraspeed, travelling by maglev is“absolutely phenomenal”. He has tried outTransrapid trains at a 19.5 mile long testtrack in Germany. “The train elevates slightlybefore setting off. We went up to 400kmphand what strikes you is how amazinglysmooth it is,” he says.

So why does Metcalf reckon that maglevwill cost £30m per kilometre of line, ratherthan the £60m or so required by high-speedrail? One reason is that maglev takes upmuch less space as it runs on an elevatedtrack cantilevered over supporting columns.On top of this, the space underneath thetrack can continue to be used for farming. Ahigh-speed rail corridor needs 25m2 of landfor every linear metre of the route whereasmaglev needs as little as 2m2 for the piersthat support the two lines. Also, less moneyis needed for security. “Because maglev iselevated, it is inherently secure,” saysMetcalf. “On the Channel Tunnel Rail Linkthey spent an awful lot of money stoppingpeople getting onto the infrastructure.”

Another advantage is that varying the

Architect Ryder has worked

up concept designs for

maglev stations. The top

image is for a city-centre

maglev station and the

bottom image is a park-and-

ride facility

Key

� High-speed rail

� Low-speed existing line

� Maglev

35projectspmdr 31/8/10 15:41 Page 41

03.09.2010 BUILDING MAGAZINE

42 / projects / maglev trains

height of the columns makes it easier tosmooth out gradients and the piers don’t haveto be set at constant intervals, which meansit’s easier to avoid infrastructure such as gasand water mains. “There’s a huge costimplication in diverting services, so being ableto vary the column spacing to avoid thesesaves an awful lot of money,” Metcalf says.

These savings mean maglev can extend toLeeds and Liverpool for a build cost of£13.7bn, which isn’t a great deal more thanthe £12.3bn needed to connect London andBirmingham with high-speed rail. There areother points, too; James is proposing thatmaglev comes into London’s Stratfordterminal via the Lea Valley, which provides adirect link to Europe, Crossrail and the tubeand DLR networks. To keep costs down, theManchester–Leeds section would follow theM62 motorway, which means a park and ridescheme could be built by the motorway.

This all sounds fine and dandy but a bigblack mark against maglev is that inSeptember 2006, 23 people died onTransrapid’s test track when a train carrying30 people slammed into a maintenancevehicle at 125mph. Crash investigators putthe accident down to human error. Anotherconcern is that conventional rail usedGeorgian technology, whereas maglev is stillpretty untested. The Germans almost built a280km line linking Hamburg with Berlin buta change of government meant the idea was

abandoned in 2000. The Chinese areinterested in building more lines and theJapanese are also toying with the idea, butit’s still early days. James suggests this couldbe tackled by building a 21st-century versionof the Darlington and Stockton line, possiblylinking Edinburgh with Glasgow.

Those who promote maglev say it is hightime the UK took a risk with a newtechnology and saw it through. Our lastattempt to bring our rail tech up to date wasthe advanced passenger train in 1981. BritishRail spent millions developing carriages thattilted as they went round corners to speed upjourney times on Britain’s bendy old network.Journalists on a pre-launch train were sick –

the consequence of free booze together withthe tilting mechanism not working asintended, earning it the moniker “queasyrider”. Then three trains brought into regularservice kept breaking down, so British Railquietly scrapped it. The Italians took over thepatents and Virgin trains bought the fullydeveloped product, the Pendolino, whichoperates flawlessly on the west coast mainline today. James points out that maglev isunusual in that the British invented it butthe Germans paid to develop it and theChinese prototyped it with the Shanghai line.The only risk left is for to build a longdistance line and maybe this time that couldbe taken on by Britain.

Maglev systems don’t have wheels or conventional track. Instead electromagnets enable the train, whichcan be up to 10 carriages long, to hover above a guide rail without physical contact so the trains aredescribed as gliding rather than rolling stock. C-shaped arms under the train wrap around the guide rail,electromagnets at the base elevate the train by 10mm and a second set of electromagnets at the sidesof the arms keep it centred on the guide rail. Back-up batteries ensure the train doesn’t flop onto theguide rail if the power fails.

Forward motion is achieved by powering up the guide rail which is in effect an unrolled electric motor.The guide rail is equivalent to the stator in an electric motor and magnets on the train are the equivalentof the rotor. The whole system is controlled remotely by a sophisticated operational control system sodrivers are not needed. The OCS regulates the power to the track with more current supplied if the trainis going uphill or if it is accelerating.

The OCS also acts as the signalling system – the guideway is divided up into sections in the same wayas conventional railways. Power is provided only to the section where the train is running and not to thesection between trains, so they cannot run into each other.. A benefit of the OCS system is that thelength of the sections can be easily varied according to the train’s speed.

HOW MAGLEV WORKS

Guide magnets control propulsion

current in track

train magnet

guide magnet

35projectspmdr 31/8/10 15:41 Page 42