Germany had a maglev test facility, near Hamburg I believe. And they definitely proved what could happen if a minor bump set up un-damped oscillations in the levitation (how would you damper them?). Not much was left of the vehicle, and significant damage was done to the test track. I haven't heard if repairs have been or even will be made. There seems no real point, as after several decades of testing, still no really practical applications have been developed, except in very limited use such as the short airport maglev in China, which isn't doing very well at this point (reports of shutting it down in the trade media).

That it can be done at all is quite interesting, and seems to fascinate the politicians, but it's going nowhere soon. The original idea was to cut out the energy "wasted" overcoming friction in a convention train. But there is no free lunch, as Sir Isaac Newton was known to say (hehe). Certainly, a levitated train has no friction to overcome, but the energy "wasted" trying to levitate it far exceeds (many times over) what was expended against friction.

The only known (tested) method of reducing levitation's extreme energy requirement was to use superconducting magnet coils. But Mr. Newton had another good laugh; as it turns out that no material has been found which super-conducts at normal temperatures. The energy required to "super-cool" the magnets sufficiently tp permit super-conduction also far exceeded frictional losses in a conventional train. Scientist are still looking for such a material - but it is highly unlikely.

Another huge problem that faces anyone wanting to do better than the conventional railway by cutting out friction, is that there is not really very much of it in the first place. Most of the resistance to motion that a train presents is caused by atmospheric drag. It goes up by the square of the speed, while frictional losses trend slightly downward as speed increases above a certain moderate level. No technology exists that will significantly reduce this huge energy buster, not even maglev.

The final straw then, is that maglev's significantly higher energy consumption leads to significantly higher operating costs. This might still be OK if offset by much lower capital costs. Unfortunately, maglev's per mile cost is as much as an urban freeway - no help there either. All in all, P.T Barnum well described those politicians and schemers who keep pushing this - a succor is born every minute.

A train's very low friction losses can be graphically illustrated by an incident I recall that happened in the 60s on SP's "San Ramon Branch, which usually had only one peddler turn a day. Of all freight cars, none presents a lower atmospheric coefficient of drag than a flat car. It was an unloaded one of these in Danville Ca. that some pranksters tried to push from one end of a siding to the other.

They got it moving alright (its not really that hard to do), but stopping it was something else they didn't think of. They probably thought it would stop on its own as soon as they stopped pushing - like any rubber tired vehicle would do. But old Isaac had the last laugh again. There wasn't enough friction between steel wheel and steel rail to do any such thing.

Indeed, It got away from them - jumped the switch and got out onto the main. Now it was more or less flat all the way to the river, some 16 miles away (less than 0.5% downgrade). But with its very low friction, gravity alone easily accelerated it. By the time it reached Concord, some 12 miles away, it was clocked at over 60mph by the police, who had closed all the crossings in town. It finally overturned at the Avon Wye, 16 miles away, just before it would have entered SPs then busy mainline to Fresno. It was fortunate that those teenagers had a conscience and reported what they had caused to the authorities, thus no-one reportedly got hurt.

OPB