Traveling on the Shanghai Maglev train

so having just flown into the Shanghai pudong International Airport I was confronted with some decisions I could ride the Metro or the maglev the maglev is magnetic levitation train and it uses magnets under the track to float slightly above the track and propels the train along the track and so I chose the maglev because it's one of the only commercially accessible magnetic levitation trains in the world this one here it is in the station and it's pretty new about 10 years old they have some large models of it in the in the station they're quite proud of it and uh at the it for now only runs about 20 miles between the airport and long Yan Road and inside it has open Corridor between all four units and here's a view of the rail I'll show later on there's a at long Yen Road there's a museum that gives you a much better idea of the way the track is constructed and how the magnets Propel the train along it so here we are starting and I just so decided to um record this in real time so you can see how quickly it goes the whole journey takes under seven minutes and you go about 20 miles I couldn't even tell when it started um that it there was any magnetic forces inside the car it all seemed to be uh under the car and um it wasn't affecting inside you can see already how quickly we're going 128 kilometers an hour you can the acceleration is so smooth and very very nice train ride no jostling no noise really from the from the rails at all you pay attention to the background you can see how quickly in fact we are moving the acceleration is really impressive like a steady ramping up [Music] at some point we even passed the other train moving the opposite direction so um passing something in over 300 miles an hour it's really impressive so here we are topping out at 301 kilometers an hour which is about 187 miles an hour and the speed is maintained through the center section of of the track so far this is the only commercially uh accessible magnet maglev train in the world the only that has uh that's open to the public and has type uprights according to a timetable both Japan and China are working towards there's the trade that just passed us incredible they're both China and Japan are working towards much faster maglev trains there being no resistance from the wheels rotating and and uh it's not in contact with anything it's just floating on a on like a magnetic cushion it's really impressive technology I think that within 10 years we'll have we'll see a lot more around the world this is my first trip to Shanghai in I just thought it was amazing to get off of four hour flight from New York the layover in Hong Kong and uh they get to ride one of the fastest trains in the world to the Leading Edge of Technology the train ride is rather short again it's only it's only seven minutes so I'm just gonna let the whole thing play in real time unfortunately we're traveling so quickly that I don't get to show any of the local freight trains this area of Shanghai is is called pudong and until the 1990s it was really a rural agricultural area and in the late 90s it was claimed declared by the country to become a Economic Development zone so it became a large city and uh all of the development that you could see is really comes since the 90s it's a great quite a big change very strange to kind of surreal to be so jet lagged and writing this train that I have been wanting to see for years but not really a yeah as you see we're already decelerating into yoga Road and the deceleration is just as quick as the acceleration in fact I was able to feel the deceleration more [Music] yourself [Music] as you see it's dropping just as fast as it was accelerating [Music] thank you coming up you can see some switches switch between tracks the switch is unlike a railroad switch the entire section of of track slides back and forth like a transfer table more than more than a switch where the the rails just re-angled themselves so here's youngin station [Music] here the train meets the Shanghai Metro Rail again so you can transfer from the maglev train to the metro train it's a very nice open air station and you can see all four units of the train on the ground level if you don't switch to the Metro there is a museum um showing uh the history of railroads and speed magnetic levitation experiments going back the whole 20th century it's a very nice station and here's the exhibits from the Museum of kind of early experiments of maglev kind of demonstration railroads in Germany China and Japan as well as France a mix of models and um kind of images the museum doesn't really cover much past the development of this particular rail line China has a much improved monorail that's in experimental stages that will eventually run between Beijing and Shanghai but a lot of interesting history of kind of early developments how the magnets interact between the magnets and the rails and the rail cars this was a nice model of the pudong International Airport about 25 feet long maybe 10 feet deep I believe N scale of of the monorail or excuse me maglev this was a concept model um from when they were proposing it initially but nice to see that it's been preserved and it's on display in this Museum so yes uh it was officially opened in 2000 and here's some of the rail inside the rail the connections of with all of the wiring to turn on and off the magnets that support and Propel the train forward as you see uh the curves are all banked so that for comfort and of the passengers and there's a switch there and uh some discussion of how mag love trains work a lot of this is really towards the average viewer um it seemed like it was probably more popular when it first opened when I went I was the only person who was there who was not working at the Museum again several of these very large models um kind of like the same scale as a Barbie um I guess once you've made a one model at that scale it's much easier to just cast it again if it's in fiberglass most of the exhibits are in Chinese although there are several sections in English and here's the magnets on and off sections and I hope you enjoyed this and stay tuned for more

Channel: Este Pandy Projects

Views: 40,847

Keywords: Worldwide railfan, Shanghai, Magnetic Levitation, Maglev train, Train with no wheels, HST, Pudong International Airport, Fastest trains, Floating train, High Tech railroading, Next level railroading, The future today, The future of railroading, Shanghai maglev

Id: X8SlGcCPH_o

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Wed May 10 2023