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Article: Fast track: with airports and highways more congested than ever, new train technologies have the potential technologies have the potential to resurrect the age of rail.(Cover story)
- Article from:
- Popular Mechanics
- Article date:
- December 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Hearst Communications, reprinted with permission of Hearst. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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NESTLED BETWEEN the seaside bluffs of Southern California's Torrey Pines and the concrete arteries of Interstate 5 is the low-profile campus of General Atomics, home to the only magnetic levitation, or maglev, train in the United States. The company's Electromagnetic Systems Division built the test track here three years ago, basing it in part on a design for a maglev rocket launch system developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
General Atomics' director of maglev systems, Sam Gurol, has promised me a rare ride on this prototype train, which is not really a train at all, but rather a single, open chassis with no seats. ...