davenash.com

It was with a certain sense of disappointment and worry last Friday that I heard the news that there had been a serious accident at the Transrapid testing facility in Germany. With a death toll of 32 and several casualties, my worst fears about the highly sophisticated maglev technology developed by Siemens and ThyssenKrupp were realised. Since seeing the revolutionary train system in action, some years back on the Discovery channel, I found myself fascinated by it's ingenious design.

Siemens and ThyssenKrupp have managed to develop a truly original magnetic levitation train system after years of painstaking research spanning back to the 1930's when a german physicist patented a theoretical method of friction free movement; something that was not be be proved until years later. The system makes use of incredibly powerful electro-magnets which keep the train floating above it's guideway while motion is provided by a linear motor that is built into the guideway itself. The fact that forward motion is controlled by the track and not the train also means that it's impossible for two trains to be traveling towards each other on the same length of track, making derailments highly unlikely.

My only concern was if this system is so safe, the only thing that could cause an accident is if something was on the guideway itself - something I had hoped Transrapid would have spent considerable time working on so this could also become highly unlikely. I'm quite disappointed that my concern was founded; I still believe in the technology but serious questions need to be asked about why a maintenance vehicle on the guideway when a live test was in progress and why weren't there proper safety precautions taken?

Transrapid 08 has been in service for some years now and I cannot understand, that in all that time, it seems that no in-depth work has been carried out to investigate how safety can further be improved. I've often wondered what extra safety systems had been developed for the Transrapid such as: Do the trains have radar to monitor guideway conditions ahead? Does the guideway have a system installed which detects if something is in the path of an oncoming train? Or perhaps is CCTV used throughout the track? Whilst I understand that the last two of these questions could be prohibitively expensive if installed on a long distance line, I have to ask why such systems weren't installed or being tested at the TVE facility in Emsland?

I only hope that this tragic accident is not the end of this revolutionary technology and my thoughts are with the families of the victims of Friday's events. If nothing else, I hope Siemens and ThyssenKrupp will investigate what can be done in future to keep these kind of accidents to a minimum as I'm still looking forward to visiting the TVE once it's been reopened to the public and travelling on Transrapid myself.