Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The train that never stops at a station


A brilliant new Chinese train innovation - get on & off the bullet train without the train stopping.  VERY COOL CONCEPT !
 
No time is wasted. The bullet train is moving all the time. If there are 30 stations between  Beijing and  Guangzhou , just stopping and accelerating again at each station will waste both energy and time.

A mere 5 min stop per station (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a  total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!

How it works (view the movie - in mandarin though!):




1. For those who are boarding the train : The passengers at a station embarks onto to a connector cabin way before the train even arrives at the station. When the train arrives, it will not stop at all. It just slows down to pick up the connector cabin which will move with the train on the roof  of the train.

While the train is still moving away from the station, those passengers will board the train from the connector cabin mounted on the train's roof. After fully unloading all its passengers, the cabin connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof.

2. For those who are getting off: As stated after fully unloading all its passengers, the cabin connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof. When the train arrives at the next station, it will simply drop the whole connector cabin at the station itself and leave it behind at the station. The outgoing passengers can take their own time to disembark at the station while the train had already left. At the same time, the train will pick up the incoming embarking passengers on another connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof. So the train will always drop one connector cabin at the rear of its roof and pick up a new connector cabin in the front part of the train's roof at each station.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

How fast is the train going when it picks up/drops off the cabins, and is there a delay when it accelerates back up to full speed? How fast is full speed, how soon and how quickly does it decelerate to drop off/pick up the cabins. And I'd imagine there'd be a train going the other way for anyone going the other way. And would there be multiple trains going the same way I'm guessing?

GS said...

I though of this a couple of years ago... a bit more cash and I would have patented it.

Michael Rose said...

Evokes the transit strips concept from Asimov's "Caves of Steel."

Unknown said...

brilliant

Anonymous said...

This is great except if it fails in anyway there will be many dead passengers.

Lewsir said...

This is interesting but seems farfetched. Where does the idea come from and is there any plan to really test a system like this in China?

Lewsir said...

Its a very interesting concept, but is it at all serious? Who's actually promoting it?

David Hawthorne said...

Passenger Warning: DO NOT FALL ASLEEP!
DO NOT BECOME SEPARATED FROM YOUR CARRY ON LUGGAGE. IF YOU FIND THAT YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT THE WRONG STATION, REMEMBER TO ALERT THOSE WAITING TO MEET YOU AND INFORM THEM OF YOUR ACTUAL LOCATION. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW YOUR ACTUAL LOCATION, RE-BOARD THE NEXT TRAIN. HOWEVER, BE CERTAIN THAT YOU BOARD THE TRAIN HEADING IN THE CORRECT DIRECTION OR YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF STILL FURTHER FROM YOUR INTENDED DESTINATION OR BACK AT YOUR STARTING LOCATION.

Unknown said...

This is a fantastic idea. There are three problems with train transport,
1. it ends up being slow because average speed drops with the number of stops.
2. It is expensive in cost, land use, and resources because tracks are heavy, require zero obstacles.
3. It is not door to door and will only take users to the nearest station (and the more stations you add the slower the train, see 1 above)
This solves problem 1 and has the potential to alleviate some of problem 3.
A lighter weight system (1-2 person pods) supported on poles (less land use) that routed the way TCP packets are routed (get anyone from one point on a network to another) seems like it could work much better (although it hasn't been built yet).

Dhaval Brahmbhatt said...

This is amazing concept....can't wait to see it in action and try it out myself as I am a train enthusiast...:)

Jay Alt said...

Clever. Unless you are an aerodynamicist. That bulge would be an efficiency killer.