Maglev in Sydney

aus.rail · Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 9:05 pm

It must be true, I read it in a Readers Digest book.

The Darling Harbour monorail uses magnetic levitation.

In a book on 20th century inventions, there is a section on magnetic
levitation railways. They list several places where it is in use, including
Sydney, and have an illustration of the monorail.

I guess that explains why it goes so fast. Smile

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DaveV · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2003 2:43 pm

and why it cost so much.

Rolling Eyes

one problem though, maglev is silent. hmm back to the old drawing board there. Wink

nazarail · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2003 9:43 am

im sure that the monorail in syd runs on wheels! if ya have a look you see them at the frount of the monorail. and the black strip on the train is fot tration.

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hidave · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2003 11:22 am

It isn't maglev...you can see for yourself go to

http://www.metrolightrail.com.au/about/monorail.pdf

it clearly has bogies and wheels....no maglev

DaveV · Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2003 7:51 pm

traincontroller · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 2:26 pm

thats what i thought too

blakjak · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 2:51 pm

I think you guys missed the tounge in cheek, we all know the Sydney monorail isn't maglev.

I kinda like the monorail, only if it did a bigger loop taking in Central station it would serve a better purpose. Also if the trams (nee light rail) utilised the Broadway tunnel to Railway Square it would also serve more ppl.

reynolds2 · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 3:32 pm

Maglev is such an expensive thing to run,
I don't think you would be paying under $5 a fare for a maglev ride.

Thank You

gboaf · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:09 pm

A Maglev would be nice to have here, with our long distances.

However, the recent crash of the Transrapid 08 in Emsland will paint a very bleak picture of Maglev safety, regardless of whatever the actual cause of the accident, and how safe the technology might be. Rolling Eyes

The media (BBC) also mentioned the electrical fire of the Transrapid in Shanghai and used that to paint them as unsafe.. Rolling Eyes

Lovely technology though. Smile

The Transrapid International site explains the technology well:

http://www.transrapid.de/

Nicely produced videos as well.

My aircraft photos on airliners.net (opens in new window)

wongm · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 10:35 pm

Simes_mk2 · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 11:05 pm

Anything above ground like the monorail or maglev is a worry to me, at least with an elevated railway (with 2 tracks) you at least have a platform to work from beside the train when something goes wrong, whereas with maglev and monorail it's all ladder and cherry picker work.....

Thanks for nothing Costa!

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blakjak · Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 11:53 pm

I think they fit more than 50 ppl if you include the ppl who can stand up. They can always put on alot of extra trains to increase the frequency as they all go to the same place so catching 'the next 1' wont be an issue & congestion isn't as big as a problem as it is on conventional railways.

SM247 · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 6:15 am

Maglev would be far too expensive initially - can anybody imagine what the cost even of Canberra to Sydney would be, let alone say Brisbane/Gold Coast to Sydney to Canbera to Melbourne? It would be a nice alternative to flying someday but I imagine the technology would be prohibitively expensive for such a long route, which is the only one where it would make economic sense to have 500km/hr running. Maybe in a few hundred years when we have room-temperature or higher superconductors, fusion power and ceramic metal hybrid materials. Very Happy

TGVs along that route, between Adelaide and Melbourne and Perth and Sydney would be nice in the meantime, but thats also a pipe dream going back to Gough.

ant · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 9:34 am

Yes, for me an LGV makes much more sense over this Maglev stuff. Maglev has its uses in enclosed environments such as large airports, but is rubbish at Urban Transit or Inter-City transport IMO for the reasons demonstrated in Germany last week. At least with an LGV there's no need to build a separate inner city terminal is there...

blakjak · Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 12:00 pm

How can you use the accident in Germany last week as an example of a bad system? The system didn't fail in any way, it was human error.
Just because some nutjob made a mistake it doesn't make the system unsafe.

Apart from money issues, the MAGLEV idea is a good 1.