Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: SUNDAY, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508080016 SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-2 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It shouldn't. Train rides to popular destinations such as Washington, D.C., and New York City would be a pleasant service. Folks here need to drive into that gridlock about as much as folks there need the extra traffic. And more important for the feasibility of the enterprise, probably, is the opportunity it would provide people traveling the other way - those suffering urban ills who would enjoy a nice ride out here to taste the pleasures we have quietly to offer.
Passenger rail's track record as a money-loser - Amtrak gets a federal subsidy of about $1 billion a year - tips the scales of probability toward the doubters. It is tipped further by the logistical difficulties with people and freight sharing tracks.
The state, however, presumably would have an interest in tipping the fiscal balance at least a bit back the other way, by subsidizing an activity that would bring tourists, business and tax revenues to this part of Virginia.
And these days, we should keep in mind, any technology is potentially one break-through away from being revolutionized.
Amtrak is too slow, rail proponents concede, and high-speed magnetically levitated trains that would travel at 300 m.p.h. are a futuristic fancy because they would require new infrastructure costing billions of dollars.
But "tilt" trains, built to round curves at higher speeds than conventional cars, could run on existing, upgraded rail lines and travel as fast as 135 m.p.h.
Now a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico reports a practical way to allow super-high-speed magnetic trains to run on existing tracks. Barry M. Marder and his colleagues took a magnetic propulsion system designed to launch things into space for the Strategic Defense Initiative (you know it had to be good for something) and adapted it to propel a magnetic train along a track.
Seraphim (for segmented rail phased induction motor) would roll on nonmotorized wheels moved by magnetic coils. Electric pulses through the coils would create forces that push against aluminum plates, which would be bolted across the tracks like the rungs of a ladder, and speed the lightweight train along as fast as 125 m.p.h. If the U.S. rail system's old track were upgraded, says Marder, Seraphim could easily travel 200-300 m.p.h.
Marder and his colleagues estimate the system could be built for one-quarter the cost of magnetically levitated trains. And the aluminum plates are completely compatible with the rails that carry heavy freight trains. Which is not to say NS and other freight haulers would embrace the notion: High-speed passenger trains and slow-moving freights still are not ideal track mates.
Some form of rapid, mass transit ought to remain a goal, though: if not this solution, then some other.
by CNB