A Maglev train ride in Shanghai

I made my second visit to China last month, spending a week in Shanghai. As some of you may know, the first operational high-speed conventional maglev railway in the world is the Shanghai Maglev Train which runs from downtown to the Pudong International Airport. And guess what, I rode it on my way back to the aiport.

Time taken for a taxi cab ride down the 30 km stretch: One hour
Time taken for the train to zips across the same stretch: 7 minutes!!!!

It hits a top speed of 431 kmph (see the snap I took below).



I took a multi-burst snap with the rapid exposure setting on (see below - top to bottom, left to right), which shows the train whizzing past a building.



Here's a short video clip I took from the window side as the train started to pick up speed - click here.

So how was the ride? Well, it was definitely very smooth and quick, thanks to the German engineering that enabled China to build this limited operational line. On the other hand, it may have been on the most boring train rides I've been on. I'd rather hang out of a slow meter gauge train anyday, watching the coaches snake their way across a bend heading in a tunnel.