Fort Collins Coloradoan from Fort Collins, Colorado • Page 24

24 Fort Collins Coloradoan Sept. 11, 1974 Transit center near Pueblo: A Buck Rogers world Colo. (AP) -Thirty miles east of Pueblo, amidst a semi-arid desert is a Buck Rogers world of modern buildings and sleek, powerful machines that look like spaceships. They're possible forerunners of future mass transit systems to move people around at 1500 miles or more an hour. They travel on rails, on cushions of air, on magnetic fields.

The Department of Transportation's High Speed Ground Test Center, which sprouted in the desert four years ago, is there to harness the latest technology to improve ground transportation, including present rail, future high speed rail and advanced systems. The $55 million complex impact of collisions and derailments is studied. Emphasis presently is on train-auto accidents at grade crossings. In the lab, technicians are able to simulate various track irregularities, including track displacement under moving loads. It eventually will be possible to feed the computer characteristics of a specific section of track from an existing railroad anywhere in the country.

"These tests are aimed at improving ride comfort, safety, reliability and speed," Reiff said. "Through these activities we are developing the technology of systems which can provide the basis for transportation system decisions for the next two decades." railway and transit equipment. Included are different types and length of rail. With old-fashioned wood ties costing $20 each these days, the durability of concrete ties is being examined. A nine-mile transit loop, with an electrified third rail, is used by the Federal Railroad Administration to develop portable instrumentation for on-the-spot diagnosing of track condition, to evaluate improved subway cars, to perfect hybrid electrical-gas turbine propulsion for rapid transit cars and to study energy storage propulsion for subway systems, using a flywheel concept.

Branching off one of the main tracks is a nearly mile-long spur where the 1 I 'U 27 "T'-rZZ could lead to streamlined vehicles that would move along one foot above a guide rail at 300 m.p.h. or more in the mid or late 1980s. The vehicle would be pollution-free and quiet. Rail maintenance costs would be reduced substantially because of lack of friction between the craft and the rail. The Ford vehicle will use electromagnets to keep floating above the rail, but its propulsion will come from rockets.

It will use rubber wheels to support itself at speeds under 50 m.p.h. Department officials feel such a transportation system would be ideal for transit between cities. Representatives of several communities in the United States and abroad are watching testing developments at the center. Department officials feel such a transportation system would be ideal for transit between cities. Representatives of several communities in the United States and abroad are watching testing developments at the center.

About two-thirds of the tracks completed here are for testing conventional set a world speed record for rail vehicles of 234 miles per hour. It is being used as a test vehicle for linear induction motors being designed for future WORLD'S FASTEST The Linear Induction Motor Research Vehicle, or LIMRV, awaits a test run at the Department of Transportation's high-speed test center in the desert near Pueblo. Aluminum rail in center helps guide vehicle, which earlier this year has more than 30 miles of tracks and guideways and a liail Dynamics Laboratory with the world's most ad- rapid transit systems. (AP) Linear motors power two unconventional guided vehicles at the center: a tracked air cushion vehicle (TACV) and a tracked levitated vehicle. (TLV).

The TACV, designed to carry 60 passengers at speeds up to 150 miles per hour, uses the air exhaust from three jet engines for lifting itself a few inches above its five-mile long U-shaped cement guideway. The TLV, built for speeds up to 300 m.p.h., may be levitated magnetically as well as by air on its 21.8-mile guideway. The department recently awarded Ford Motor Co. a $2.1 million contract for development and testing of a vehicle that could ride on a magnetic field above a single aluminum rail. It vanced computer-controlled simulator, which permits simulation of speeds up to 288 miles per hour under varying track conditions.

A bridge crosses a pair of tracks with a high rail in the center. Three miles up the track is a burst of smoke or dust hurtling at incredible speed is a red and white bullet-shaped projectile. It zips under the bridge and out of sight. The speeding object was a linear induction motor research vehicle, or L1MRV. Glenn A.

Reiff the center's senior project engineer, says it travels at 150 miles an hour and has a two-man crew. Earlier this year it set a world speed record for rail vehicles of 234 miles an hour. Such motors are essentially rotary motors unrolled and laid out flat. They are propelled by electromagnetic forces and because they have no moving parts, they are noiseless, vibrationless and practically pollution-free. Sears MUG- ALON.

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