i like the use of "derailed" instead of "never got off the ground" in the headline.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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It put Ogdenville and West Haverbrook on the map.
I feel that even if someone succeeds with Maglev it will at best be the Concorde of the railways due to the higher costs and inconvenience of using a niche technology with a limited supply chain and limited number of engineers available to build and maintain lines. Proprietary tech also limits your ability to shop around or negotiate better prices. Remember that Concode was profitable but was retired because it was uneconomical.
I also wanted to draw attention to the diminishing returns higher speeds deliver: 100km/h train = 4 hour journey 200km/h train = 2 hours 300km/h train = 1 hour 20 mins 400km/h train = 1 hour 500km/h train = 48 mins 600km/h train = 40 mins
This ignores acceleration and breaking times and the faster your train the sooner it has to start decelerating in order to avoid overshooting it's destination. One overlooked time saving that HSR delivers is that the need to build straight tracks and skip stops to maintain speed means a more direct route to your destination delivered at the expense of the places in between. High speed service is actually a downgrade for many communities as the trains no longer serve local stations.
Can you explain "profitable, but not economical?"
Concorde only flew 2 routes; NYC to London and NYC to Paris so in exchange for training pilots and engineers and securing supply chains for the aircraft you got a tiny return on investment. BA also kept a spare aircraft permanently parked in New York that could step in if there were any problems with the primary craft, another significant expense.
Installing lie flat beds and suites in standard jumbo jets provided similar profits with way fewer headaches.
Doesnt make as much money as theoretically possible and god forbid a single cent is left on the table
Oh. Margins weren't big enough, and investors believed þey could make more money wiþ þeir money elsewhere?
100km/h train = 4 hour journey 200km/h train = 2 hours 300km/h train = 1 hour 20 mins 400km/h train = 1 hour 500km/h train = 48 mins 600km/h train = 40 mins
It feels like you're scoring returns logarithmically as you move the scale additively here. The faster you go, the sooner you arrive, it's simple and linear. I'm not actually sure if acceleration and deceleration has been a big issue at the scales involved.
Edit: As is the author. Really, added cost per added speed is the important function, which isn't gone into in any detail.
Doubling the speed turns a 4 hour journey into a 2 hour journey saving you 2 hours. Double speed again and it drops to 1 hour so you only save 1 hour, double again and you save 30 minutes. So the time saving is cut in half each time.
It is not linear but some sort of hyberpolic function as the OP is describing: double the speed and you halve the travel time, you move closer to zero travel time but never reach it. With a linear relation you would reach zero travel time at a specific speed point.
Yeah, how is it so unbelievable that when you go twice the speed you are twice as fast but when you go a third faster in speed you only go a third fast in time. Diminishing returns is something else, like you would go a third faster in speed but arrive only a quarter faster.
Agreed, It'd be interesting to see the cost breakdowns.
I guess you have to spend more on tracks to get higher speeds, but still to get to 600kph you must put a lot of electricity into that thing.
If sort of feels like maglev should be able recover a decent amount of electricity during braking, but maybe there are practical constraints - or just too much loss to wind resistance.
Maybe it comes down to just a handful of magnets round a few axles being cheaper than a long line of magnets the length of the track.
Maybe. Presently, the savings in human time is not worthwhile, but the value of human time does tend to rise over time, and it's possible that someone might find cargos for which time savings are more valuable.