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I'm on my way back into the past. "Oh, look, there it is!" When I was 16, I went on an unforgettable train ride. Now unfortunately, there aren't any photos of that day. But I walked up those exact stairs, stepped onto this exact train. A train without wheels. The Transrapid literally floated above its track, held up and propelled by the power of magnets. It routinely reached insane speeds, taking visitors like me around its test track.
I remember intently watching the speed display. And couldn't believe when it edged past 400 kilometers per hour because it just felt so smooth. I was sure I was riding the train of the future. Turns out. I was wrong. "This used to be a marvel of German engineering and now it's just sitting here." To put it mildly. "Check this out, it's all rusty up there."
…things have gone a bit downhill. What happened? If you, like me, grew up in Germany in the 1990s and 2000s, it was impossible not to hear about the Transrapid. It was a constant topic in the media. And many a politician's poster child. It was a high-speed magnetic levitation, or maglev, train. There were big plans to build a connection between Hamburg and Berlin, cutting travel times to under an hour. It was supposed to connect the Ruhrgebiet, one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Europe. And take people from Munich's train station
to its airport in 10 minutes instead of more than 40. "Here, the Transrapid is a golden solution." Other countries, like China and the US, wanted to buy the technology and build their own lines. And all this wasn't pie-in-the-sky thinking. The technology was basically ready to go and had been tried and tested extensively. Right here, in north-western Germany, at the very test track I visited 20 years ago. Ansgar Schlüter is showing us around the old train station. He's one of the presidents of a local association working to preserve the memories around the Transrapid.
"I remember this. This is where we went up to board the train." "It really is like stepping back in time when you come up here." "Yes, because it is." He also worked for the company that ran the test track for more than 20 years. "Visitors checked in down there at the visitor center. At the start of the ride, they gathered here. One complete ride. Then the train would come in. We opened this here and the visitors could board the train for the next ride."
"But nothing's running here anymore?" "Nothing's running here anymore. The Transrapid has been largely dismantled. Most of the motor has been removed. So no vehicle can run here anymore." On some days, he remembers, up to 2,000 visitors came here, eager to experience the floating train. "The faster the vehicle went, the smoother it became. And from around 50 km/h you really started to feel: now, we're hovering. Now, we're flying! Going into the curves felt especially nice because the track was sloped - just enough so the Transrapid tilted slightly from its center of gravity.
Just like when you fly you sort of lean into the curves." "Do you miss that feeling?" "No, not anymore. I've moved on from the Transrapid." Over the years, there have been many different prototypes and iterations of Transrapid trains. One of the most remarkable ones, the TR07, is still right here. "And this train ran on the test track?" "It did. It ran from 1988, 1989 up until around 2000. It's also the vehicle that set the speed record, at 450 km/h."
"Okay… so it was possible to go 450 km/h before 2000?" "Yes, of course. That wasn't a problem at all. The vehicle was designed for a top speed of 500 km/h. The only problem was that the track here was too short." This was in 1993. When I was like… four years old, this thing was going faster than pretty much any train in the world you can board today. "Wow…"
"You still have the old seats here." "Yes, they look fine from the back. But from the front, they don't. You can really see the ravages of time here. Water was constantly dripping onto them, so they're rotten." Generally, the train looks pretty beat up. Water has leaked into it. Ansgar and his association, all volunteers, are working to fix it. They're also running a visitor center where people can find out about the history of the Transrapid. And how it worked.
"Once I switch this on, power goes to the magnets. That is controlled and the distance is measured - and then it levitates. Take a look, it slowly rises and starts to float." "It's magic." "Magic, right?" The basic idea for this is actually fairly old. This guy built a functioning model as far back as 1914. And from 1934, this guy, Hermann Kemper, filed patents in Germany for "a levitating railway with wheel-less vehicles guided along iron rails by magnetic fields."
These, in essence, outlined how the Transrapid would later work. The red things here are electromagnets, built into the lower part of the train. When you switch them on, they "pull up" the train towards steel plates along the track, the green things. Sensors measure the gap between train and track and if you regulate the power just right, the train levitates. "That's what enables these high speeds. I don't have any rolling friction at all. And because there's no physical contact anywhere, there's also no wear and tear."
What's also special is that the motor isn't inside the train, but built into the track. It's essentially a "rolled out" electric motor - carefully arranged coils - that create a moving electromagnetic field, pulling the train along. And all this didn't just work in those retro 3D animations. It worked in real life. But that alone wasn't enough. "The technology was sound, no question. But ultimately, the overall context just wasn't right." This is Marcel Schütz, a sociologist who researches innovations - and why they sometimes fail. "The Transrapid in the end fell victim to a set of problems related to the transport system - and not so much to the technology itself."
The Transrapid had a big rival: the ICE. Germany's high-speed train that could go pretty fast. Not as fast as the Transrapid, but fast enough for many. And the ICE could also use existing rails, while the Transrapid needed entirely new tracks. Building just the tracks for the Transrapid between Hamburg and Berlin was supposed to cost around 6 billion DM - about 8 billion US dollars in today's money. As planning went on, estimates went up to around 10 billion DM. Eventually, in 2000, the whole project was called off. But instead of scrapping the Transrapid altogether, planning for the Metrorapid line in western Germany began.
Shortly after, it was discontinued as well - also because it was deemed too expensive. Meanwhile, the first real-world Transrapid line did get built - abroad. In Shanghai, a 30 km route between the airport and the city was pulled up and opened in under three years. But all other countries interested in the Transrapid wanted to see a track within Germany before moving ahead with plans at home. So all hopes rested on the project in Munich. And then came the 22nd of September 2006. "This is Germany's Channel One with the Tagesschau.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. A serious accident occurred today on the Transrapid test track in the Emsland region." Twenty-three people were killed, 11 injured. Shortly after leaving the station, the train crashed into a maintenance vehicle which shouldn't have been out on the track at that time. I remember all this fairly well because it happened not long after I rode the Transrapid. Ansgar was okay to take us to where the accident happened. But he didn't want to talk about it in front of the camera, saying he wants to leave that day in the past.
An investigation later found the accident was down to "human error" and not a technical problem. Testing could continue, but from now on without the general public on board. "Powerful images burn themselves into memory. Disasters are iconic in their impact. And the accident… you have to be careful not put this cynically. But, symbolically speaking, it was the final nail in the coffin of a technology that had - effectively - already been written off." The Munich airport link was finally cancelled in 2008 - again officially due to spiraling costs.
The test track was eventually closed down in 2011. And with it, the dream of a successful high-speed magnetic levitation train made in Germany ended. But 15 years later, some say it's time to start dreaming again. "The Transrapid offers advantages that, to this day, no other system has been able to replicate." David Harder is an activist fighting to bring back the Transrapid. He's running an online platform, where he collects and publishes information about the technology. "You're now 22 years old?"
"Exactly." "So when everything here shut down, you were seven years old?" "Yeah, about that." "So what fascinates you so much about this to spend so much time on it?" "This technology isn't just exciting from a historical perspective. It also still offers so many advantages, especially today. Our rail system is unreliable and unpunctual. There's increasing long-distance traffic, also increasing air travel. It's just clear to me: We urgently need a solution like the Transrapid. And the fact that all this was developed right here,
in the region that I come from, and that site is still standing as a kind of ruin… that makes it even more fascinating to me." One of those advantages is that, at higher speeds, it uses less energy than traditional high-speed rail trains. And unlike a normal train, there is no friction, making it cheaper to maintain. Also, it can manage tighter curves and steeper inclines, which lets you lay out the tracks much more flexibly. It can kind of nestle into the environment, especially when you put in on stilts like here.
"The big benefit here, for example, is that we're right in the middle of the forest in Lathen and wildlife migration isn't affected at all. There's no big cut through the forest. You can see all the trees here continuing to grow." But when you take stock of the progress of maglev trains worldwide, those advantages seem to be lost on most. The US, for example, just scrapped a planned maglev connection after around a decade of planning. The airport connection in Shanghai is still running. But it's the only operational high-speed maglev line in the world.
"The reason why maglev technology rarely gets built is not because of their technical impossibility but rather their practical trade-offs in the sense that costs outweighed the benefits." Francesca Pagliara is a transport researcher, mainly looking into high-speed rail and related technologies, like maglevs. "Unlike normal trains, maglev systems need entirely new infrastructure. For example, you cannot reuse existing tracks, the guideways, power systems and control tech.
They are all specialized which drives costs way up." There seem to be only two countries willing to fork out the money needed to build all this. One of them is China, which has developed its own maglev train, claiming it can reach speeds of up to 600 km/h. The other is Japan, where research has been underway for decades. They have developed a train that can go up to over 600 km/h. Work is underway to build a line connecting Tokyo and Osaka.
The first part was originally planned to open in 2027. But now it's not expected to open any time before 2034. "It is a very busy corridor. And the high-speed rail line is close to saturation. And so magnetic levitation makes sense on this ultra-high demand corridor because it will add capacity. It seems that maglev systems are rather a single premium corridor while high speed rail, you know, works as a network." In Germany, there is a company, Max Bögl, that has developed a maglev train specifically for urban transport. It's supposed to be quieter than "normal" city trains, and go up to 150 km/h. That's very different from what the Transrapid wanted to be: a mind-blowingly fast train. But that vision seems to have reached its final stop.
The test track is supposed to be dismantled. Regardless, Ansgar and his association want to keep alive some of the memories around the Transrapid. "We're planning to make all this waterproof and refurbish the rusted sections. We still have quite a few seats and chairs stored away and we can install those in here." "The original seats?" "Yes, we still have them. And then it's really just a question of what other ideas we can come up with.
Whether we can use part of it for an exhibition, for example, that explains the technology behind the Transrapid. In any case, the initial goal is to make it look presentable from the outside, so it can be displayed. After that we tackle the inside." For a last glimpse of what could have been, I got to check out the last Transrapid built in Germany. It was supposed to run in Munich. Instead, it ended up being converted into meeting spaces at a sausage factory, run by the great-grandson of the guy who filed the original patent.
David organized for us to take an exclusive look into the part still in its original condition. "It smells new!" "What's it like for you to sit on this train?" "It feels almost magical because I remember seeing it on the test track when I was a kid. And for years, I always wanted to go inside but I was never able to because visitors weren't allowed on anymore. Sitting here now, just imagining how wonderful it could have been, especially the line in Munich… it does make me a little sad."
It felt strange being in this shiny new train that seemed like it would start driving any minute. Once people thought this was the future. But the future is now and this train is already a thing of the past. "What do you think? Would you want your government to build a high-speed maglev train like this? Let us know in the comments, don't forget to hit subscribe and go to dw.com for more infos."
