Birmingham Maglev

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Eurorapid
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Birmingham Maglev

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Birmingham Airport Maglev carriage sold on eBay for £100
It was once an iconic transporter, taking passengers to and from Birmingham Airport, but now a Maglev carriage has found a new home at the bottom of a Warwickshire garden, having been sold for just £100.
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2021-05-13_Andrew_Jones_Birmingham_Maglev_1
2021-05-13_Andrew_Jones_Birmingham_Maglev_1
Source: https://www.business-live.co.uk/economi ... ld-3920635
Accessed: 2021-05-13
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It was once an iconic transporter, taking passengers to and from Birmingham Airport.
But now a Maglev carriage has found a new home at the bottom of a Warwickshire garden, having sold for just £100.

The carriage, an example of one of the world’s first magnetic levitation transport systems, originally attracted a bid of £25,000 when it was put up for sale on eBay {...]. But the price was never paid and when it was re-listed, it attracted just one bid, from Andrew Jones, who lives near Kenilworth.
Source: https://www.business-live.co.uk/economi ... ld-3920635
Accessed: 2021-05-13
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2021-05-13_Andrew_Jones_Birmingham_Maglev_2
2021-05-13_Andrew_Jones_Birmingham_Maglev_2
Source: https://www.business-live.co.uk/economi ... ld-3920635
Accessed: 2021-05-13
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The other Maglev carriage is in a rail museum in Peterborough.
Source: https://www.business-live.co.uk/economi ... ld-3920635
Accessed: 2021-05-1
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Eurorapid
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Joined: 17. Apr 2021, 23:08

Maglev at Birmingham Airport in 1984

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Photo: The Maglev in action at Birmingham Airport in 1984.
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2021-05-13 Birmingham Maglev 1984
2021-05-13 Birmingham Maglev 1984
Source: https://www.business-live.co.uk/economi ... ld-3920635
Accessed: 2021-05-13
Photographer: unknown.
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Eurorapid
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Re: Birmingham Maglev

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Opened in 1984, the Birmingham Maglev came at the very tail end of a trente glorieuses for British transport technology and, more broadly, European engineering; an era that promised so much yet eventually bequeathed so many relics and ruins.

The modernism of the 20th century, expressed especially in architecture and engineering, seemed like nothing less than the founding of a new order. Progress was to be continual, unstoppable and good. Yet today the physical and philosophical advances are being gradually taken apart and retracted, as if we'd woken up sweating and feared we'd somehow overreached ourselves.

When the Birmingham Maglev was shuttered in 1995, one of the cars was dumped in a hedge near the A45. Furniture maker and transport enthusiast Andy Jones splashed out a mere £100 for it on eBay in 2011 (although, he says, "it cost me £400 to get it out of the hedge!"). Now it sits in a field behind Jones's house in Burton Green, a couple of miles east of the airport in the rolling Warwickshire countryside.

[...]

Bob Gwynne, associate curator of collections and research at the National Rail Museum in York, says: "British Rail's Derby Research Centre, founded in 1964, was arguably the world's leading rail research facility when it was in full operation. An understanding of the wheel and rail interface comes from there, as does the first tilting train, a new railbus, high-speed freight wagons, computer-controlled interlocking of track and signal, the first successful maglev and many other things." Gwynne has got the second of the three Birmingham Maglev cars at the museum.

[...]

But the British maglev never really took off. Tim Dunn, transport historian and co-presenter of the BBC's Trainspotting Live, explains why. "The early 80s was still a time of great British national-funded engineering," he says. "Success at Birmingham Airport would have been a great advert for British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) to sell maglev internationally. (Remember that BREL was always trying to sell its technology overseas, which is why several Pacer trains, developed on bus bodies, were sold to Iran.) Birmingham's Maglev only lasted 11 years: replacement parts were getting hard to obtain for what was really a unique system. Buses took over, and eventually a cable-hauled SkyRail people-mover was installed atop the piers. That's not as exciting for people like me, who like the idea of being whisked in a hovertrain pushed along by magnets. But then our real transport future always has been a pretty crap approximation of our dreams."

[...]
Back in Burton Green, Andy Jones's maglev car lies in limbo. "I'd like to build a platform around it," he says, "turn it into a playhouse for the grandchildren perhaps? A couple of people want to take it away and turn it into a cafe." Perversely perhaps, its fate may be decided by another type of transport technology: more conventional high speed rail. The route for the much-disputed High Speed 2 line from London to Birmingham slices right through the field where the maglev car sits.

In the 2000s the UK Ultraspeed proposal was floated to link London, Birmingham, the North and Scotland by maglev. It never materialised. HS2 was the eventual successor to the Ultraspeed plan, though a less futuristic one. Jones has another idea for his forward moving relic: "Maybe I'll turn it into viewing platform, so you could watch HS2's outdated technology."
Source: https://thelongandshort.org/machines/wh ... ish-maglev
accessed: 20215-05-13
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Birmingham Maglev

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Why Did Birmingham Airport’s Maglev Shuttle Close After Just 11 Years?
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2021-12-05_Birmingham Maglev
2021-12-05_Birmingham Maglev
The low-speed maglev shuttle that ran from the airport terminal of Birmingham International Airport to the nearby Birmingham International railway station between 1984–1995. Author MaltaGC https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... Maglev.jpg Accessed: 2021-12-05


This technology made use of repelling magnetic forces between the shuttle and its tracks to cause it to ‘hover’ 1.5 cm in the air. Powered by linear induction motors, the Birmingham Maglev ‘flew’ between the railway station and the terminal building.

[...]
Despite the Birmingham Maglev’s initial popularity among travelers looking to transit between the terminal and the station, it soon became plagued with reliability problems. A frequent issue was electrical failures concerning the magnetic transit system.

[...]

These issues arose as a result of obsolescence problems concerning Birmingham Maglev’s electrical systems. The unreliability eventually reached a point where the airport elected to close the levitating people mover. It did so in 1995, after 11 years of operations. After the last service on June 18th, Birmingham Airport replaced the Maglev with a bus.

Meanwhile, the former transit system’s cars were stored, with one ending up at the National Rail Museum. The BBC reports that, in 2011, another was purchased privately for just £100.
Source: https://simpleflying.com/birmingham-air ... v-shuttle/ Accessed: 2021-12-05
2021-12-05_One of the Maglev’s cars is displayed at York’s National Railway Museum. Photo: Birmingham Maglev
2021-12-05_One of the Maglev’s cars is displayed at York’s National Railway Museum. Photo: Birmingham Maglev
Photo: Tom Page via Flickr: https://flickr.com/photos/tompagenet/27 ... 5nf-JkpsvP Accessed: 2021-12-05
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