[Serial_Worrier]

Looks like a very workable machine to me. Not a tough engineering challenge or anything.

You don't sound like a real engineer to me. Nobody just glances at an article like this and declares something like this "no challenge". Faker.

[Carlhole]

pstarr like to show off the shiny hard-on he has for Carlhole. That's nice, pstarr. Go and play now.

So what is so tough about the engineering of this "train that never stops" idea?

[EnergyUnlimited]

pstarr like to show off the shiny hard-on he has for Carlhole. That's nice, pstarr. Go and play now.

So what is so tough about the engineering of this "train that never stops" idea?

If there is an intermediary station where substantial proportion of passengers is embarking or disembarking, it kills the project.
No design of embarking cabin can handle that.
You would end up with secondary embarking train and all energy efficiency would be lost.

[dolanbaker]

pstarr like to show off the shiny hard-on he has for Carlhole. That's nice, pstarr. Go and play now.

So what is so tough about the engineering of this "train that never stops" idea?

One thing that springs to mind is, how does the embarking car run over the carriages of the main train? The flexing that any track would need to have where the carriages meet would make it almost impossible to run the embarking car over it!

[EnergyUnlimited]

Btw,
Here is an American version of the idea:

[Carlhole]

pstarr like to show off the shiny hard-on he has for Carlhole. That's nice, pstarr. Go and play now.

So what is so tough about the engineering of this "train that never stops" idea?

One thing that springs to mind is, how does the embarking car run over the carriages of the main train? The flexing that any track would need to have where the carriages meet would make it almost impossible to run the embarking car over it!

So you build the track section particularly smooth and solid. Build appropriate flexing in the wheels of the embarking car...

What you are suggesting is not much of an impediment to ordinary engineering.

[dolanbaker]

The axles have to be rigid to hold the gauge of the rails, flexible wheels would hunt and derail.

[dorlomin]

So if you have a 200m long train doing 110kmh

V2= Vi2+2(S-Si)
(1.1*106m/s)2 = (0)2+2a(200m)
6.05*109m2/s2= 400ma
1.51*107m/s2 = a

You will need a much longer train running much slower to avoid liquifying your passengers.

[Plantagenet]

European manufacturers of high-speed trains are crying foul over China's new high speed train industry, which is based on train designs and technology stolen from European partners who entered into joint ventures with Chinese partners.

China stole high speed train designs from European partners

Not only did China steal their designs and use them on the high speed train network now being built in China, China is using the stolen technology to compete against and underbid European companies vying for contracts to build new train lines in countries around the world.

Soooooo-prise, Sooooooo-prise.

[Plantagenet]

Oh...and China stole Japanese Bullet-train technology too..........................

[KingM]

That's the China Price. You'll get a couple of big contracts or good years but at the cost of decades of R&D flushed down the toilet.

[Daniel_Plainview]

Not only did China steal their designs and use them on the high speed train network now being built in China, China is using the stolen technology to compete against and underbid European companies vying for contracts to build new train lines in countries around the world.

This is 100.00% predictable. Not 99.99% ... but 100.00%. There was NEVER ANY GLIMMER OF DOUBT but that this would happen.

I hope the owners of the technology had an iron-clad contract with provisions forbidding China's use of trade secrets and confidential proprietary technologies. I hope they also have patent protection. If not, they are absolute idiots.

[KingM]

You can buy cheap tools at Harbor Freight---milling machines, metal lathes and saws etc--that are useful to build most anything. The plans are/will be public because Information wants to be free. Drug patents last 7 years. How about industrial patents?

You need more than industrial patents, you need a lot of engineers and other technical know how. A lot of Western companies come in, share all the information and then are surprised when the Chinese go into business for themselves. Sure, the Chinese could start from the ground up, but why would they, when a couple of temporary partnerships will give them everything they need?

[dolanbaker]

"Chinese copies", nothing new here, move along now please...

The antiques shops are full of them!

[kublikhan]

America did the same thing when we stole technology from the British to found our industrial revolution. It is quite common for developing nations to steal technology from developed nations. It's never fun for the person/country getting stolen from however.

An already vast British textile industry grew by leaps and bounds in the last half of the eighteenth century, providing much of the wealth that allowed Britain to rise to superpower status. Other countries, naturally, wanted in on the action. But as long as Britain could keep the secrets of the wondrous machines that had started the Industrial Revolution, she could keep her lucrative monopoly of cheap, quality cloth. The British government was certainly determined to try. It was illegal to export the machinery or plans for it. People with textile expertise were forbidden to emigrate. British customs watched closely to prevent any unauthorized departures.

With Britain determined to keep her secrets, the nascent United States had only two choices if it was to fulfill President Washington’s hopes and develop a textile industry of its own: The new technology had to be either reinvented by Americans or stolen from Britain. The first alternative was not very likely. While the early spinning machines seem extraordinarily crude to us who live in the computer age, they were the highest of high tech in the eighteenth century. Furthermore, the United States had few, if any, citizens who were even remotely familiar with the intricacies of textile production on a mass scale.

So the technology had to be stolen. Although British newspapers were forbidden to print them, clandestine advertisements were circulated through the textile areas promising big rewards to anyone who could set up working textile machinery in the United States. One person who surely was aware of these offers was Samuel Slater of Belper, Derbyshire, in the very heart of the textile area. Before he left Strutt’s employ, he carefully committed to memory the smallest details of the new spinning equipment, fully intending to use his knowledge of the British textile secrets as a substitute for capital.

Soon numerous mills were springing up along New England’s many swift-flowing rivers. By the end of Slater’s life, forty-five years later, cotton spinning was a major New England industry, employing many thousands of people. In 1833, two years before Slater’s death on April 20, 1835, President Andrew Jackson toured New England. At the end of his visit, the seventh President of the United States bestowed on the man who had been instrumental in fulfilling the hopes of the first President the honorary title of father of American manufactures.

Technology Transfer

YOUR OPINION of Samuel Slater must depend on which side of the Atlantic you call home.To any patriotic American, Slater is the man who kick-started the American Industrial Revolution, and as such he must be regarded as the founder of the nation's wealth and prestige.In England, where he was born, he has been largely forgotten, but those who do know of him tend to regard him as a thief and a traitor to his country.

Industrial Revolution - Samuel Slater

in Derbyshire, he became known as "Slater the Traitor" because he had betrayed the secrets of the cotton machines and there was fear among the workers that they might lose business and, possibly, jobs.

[dissident]

The path of least resistance is the not always the proper one. How do you copy the alloys that go into making parts? Using a mass spectrometer is not enough. At the end of the day there is no actual human capital and real knowhow developed in China.

[TreeFarmer]

Aren't the Chinese buying a goodly portion of GM?

Soon the Chinese will be making cars that are good enough to export and compete.

TF