Real life has finally caught up to N scale.....

[u18b]

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/china-highspeed-maglev-prototype/index.html

At 372 mph, I need to make new body shells for my old Atlas and Kato locomotives to make them realistic!
 

[DKS]

I'm sorry, but the only way you could induce me board one of these is to either get me roaring drunk, or inject me with thiobarbital.

[central.vermont]

Anyone else think Shuttle Craft when you saw that shot of the engineers seat!!! 

Jon

[jdcolombo]

Chicago to NYC is about 800 miles.  A train going 372mph could make that trip in a little over 2 hours.  Even with time spent boarding, accelerating, decelerating for the station, and stops, it would be better than taking a flight from O'Hare to one of the airports, if you could connect such a beast to one of the Manhattan train stations (Pennsy station?) which would eliminate the hour-long cab ride.

It's really too bad that the United States let its passenger rail service go to hell in a handbasket. 

John C.

[nkalanaga]

The problem is that, outside a few corridors, the US is too big, and too sparsely populated, to support a real rail passenger network.  Long haul and corridor trains are fine, and there is a market for them, but cars are still needed to get to most of the real estate.  So, people drive.  A decent passenger rail network would reduce air travel, but not really reduce the need for cars, or highways.

[CBQ Fan]

The problem is that, outside a few corridors, the US is too big, and too sparsely populated, to support a real rail passenger network.  Long haul and corridor trains are fine, and there is a market for them, but cars are still needed to get to most of the real estate.  So, people drive.  A decent passenger rail network would reduce air travel, but not really reduce the need for cars, or highways.

It drives me nuts when people try to compare transportation networks from Europe to the US, the scale and needs are just so different it is an ignorant argument.

[ljudice]

if you could connect such a beast to one of the Manhattan train stations (Pennsy station?) which would eliminate the hour-long cab ride.

Thanks to the lack of funding for the Gateway Tunnel, you can't add any more trains to Penn Station from New Jersey, much less some maglev fantasy train.

With more frequent trains in dense corridors, the US could do very well - a good model being the Netherlands or Switzerland.