Trains up to 75% faster than now, which can travel on existing railway lines, therefore without the need for significant (and expensive) interventions at the infrastructure level: this is the idea that Italian Railway Network (company of the Fs group) and Nevomo have decided to carry on, exploiting the technology of magnetic levitation, analyzing and testing it until verifying its actual feasibility.
According to what we read in a joint note from the two companies, the project is called Magrail and aims to superimpose the systems for magnetic levitation on the existing infrastructure: to study the potential of this transport system, a memorandum of understanding was signed by Vera Fiorani, managing director and general manager of RFI, and Przemyslaw Doughnut, CEO of Polish-Swiss technology company Nevomo.
The agreement aims to verify the technical and economic feasibility of the new technology, as well as the real possibility of to make the traditional and magnetic railway systems coexist: the Magrail is a new magnetic levitation transport system integrated with the existing regional and high-speed railway lines, thus avoiding significant interventions on civil works and related investments.
From a technical point of view, as mentioned, the system aims to allow the passage on the same line as both conventional trains and new levitation vehicles magnetic, which exploiting the new technology will benefit from an increase in speed which, according to the hypotheses under study, could reach up to 75% more than the current one.
The two companies will ask for funding from the European Union for the construction of a real one Magrail pilot project on the test track owned by Rfi in Bologna San Donato: this will be the last phase of the tests, which should trigger the certification and homologation processes necessary to allow the commercial implementation of the technology.
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