Posted by Howard Richman on May 05 2008 at 08:55:23:
Here´s a selection from an article in today´s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Floating trains ... sounds like science fiction!" South Fayette High School sophomore Eric Wise declared when he and other gifted students visited Maglev Inc. facilities in McKeesport.Howard"Well, I saw the work with my own eyes," he said after touring the RIDC Park shop that holds the first 22-foot-long sections of guideway ever built in the United States for a magnetically-levitated, high-speed train line.
The huge, trapezoid-shaped beams with 11/4-inch-thick steel were precision-fabricated by a large-scale robotic welding machine using computers and laser beams to control amazingly small geometric tolerances.
"The equipment was conceived, designed and patented right here," Maglev Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Fred Gurney told Eric and a dozen other students enrolled in an apprenticeship program sponsored by the Pittsburgh chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers in conjunction with the Allegheny Intermediate Unit. "To give you an idea of its capability, it can do in two hours what would take two days for two people to do."...
"The word ´engineer´ is a broad term and sometimes a student doesn´t know what it means to be one," said Joe Sadaka, of Cranberry, who´s home-schooled. "The tour gave me a hands-on view."...