Didn’t everyone do that in the 70s? Maybe even the us did it (not sure).
Were there any advantages over normal trains except cool factor?
Yes: speed. But if you weigh advantages against disadvantages (by far the largest being the need for completely new infrastructure), hover trains simply lost.
And not only in the UK, btw. Similar projects had been scrapped all over the world, for the same reasons.
I’m not sure about energy consumption; the video makes it sound like they used a lot of electricity but then I suspect normal high speed trains do as well.
I’m also unsure about the hovering being achieved by fans and not magnetic levitation. The video does not go deep enough there: was the former supposed to be supplanted by the latter, in time? I’m not an expert, but using strong fans to lift a 22t car off the tracks feels inferior to me, if magnets could achieve the same, probably consuming less energy and being less error prone.
Mostly, they allowed for >250km/h speeds. They were basically competing technology and were developed at the same time as modern high speed rail (and lost).
Not really. Needs its own rails too so you can’t use other trains on it or it on other tracks. Regular high speed trains are capable of going faster than UK speed limits anyway so really it would be better to upgrade the existing infrastructure to allow higher speeds if speed was a concern.
A high speed train can also go onto non high speed lines, just at a lower speed. The reverse is also possible although generally you want to avoid blocking up the line too much with slower trains.
Build HS2 and then start HS3-12. Tell NIMBYs to go fuck themselves.
Speed, at the cost of an incompatible and more expensive infrastructure, and even “regular” raillines are now can be upgraded to 300km/h.
even “regular” raillines are now can be upgraded
I assume this is contingent on the existing line being fairly straight and direct? Where I live, the tracks are very meandering to navigate hills and valleys, and train staff told me the chance of an upgrade was basically zero.
Heath was prime minister for this with Thatcher in his cabinet, right? (albeit she was focused on stealing milk from kids at the time)
Neoliberals ruining our country’s potential for half a century now 🎉
I mean… this thing just ate energy. The prototype car was pulling 6.5kV off the conducting rails to keep the air jets running hard enough for the hovering, and it wasn’t even carrying a passenger load. If you add more weight you have to add more air thrust to keep hovering, which means bigger engines and more power, and the production model will need extras for redundancy because if the air cushion weakens while you’re doing 200+kph and the car just grazes the track you’re in big trouble. I seriously doubt this concept can scale up to a working transit system and be at all safe. The electricity input alone would be a hazard.
I’ll bet it sounded like a Harrier from the outside too.
Also what do you think the vortex is like above the air intakes? I’m imagining this thing cruising along sucking in birds and just flushing them straight down onto the track as it travels the countryside.
I was really skeptical about the air hovering, as opposed to magnetic. The video did not go deep enough there imho. They were planning to switch the project to maglev? Or did he just put that in as a historical comparison?
As a layman, it seems to me magnetic levitation would consume significantly less energy, and probably be less error prone.
I love Cold War era “throwing technology at the wall to see what sticks” projects. So many ideas were tried and often the ideas themselves weren’t bad but something else was a limiting factor (e.g. our level of material science technology at the time). Even so, they’d often get a lot further than one could reasonably expect, which is rather cool.
It’s a shame that these cool things are probably too expensive. The Transrapid, a hover train from Germany, unfortunately also failed to catch on, but at least one commercial line was built in China connecting Shanghai Pudong International Airport with Longyang Road Station in the city, which is still in operation today.
It’s the same situation as maglev trains cool but impractical.
Similar projects popped up across the globe at that time, and were scrapped for the same reasons: the need for a completely new infrastructure.
I also suspect hover trains weren’t consuming less energy than conventional. So the only advantage you get are higher speeds. The numbers simply didn’t add up.
