Together with the provision of food and shelter major part of mans economic activity is devoted to transporting people from one place to another and supporting the industry which makes this movement possible. It can be argued that many off the threats to our present social and economic organizations are attributed to the same transport industry. It is not surprising then, that any idea which promises to improve the means of movement of people or goods sure attract wide interest. To overcome the above difficulties people are planning for introducing new forms of guided land transport, although it must be noted that of the costs of introducing novel railway systems offering significant the benefits in speed and efficiency are very high indeed. It is perhaps not surprising that the most significant efforts to develop a levitated railway are being made in Japan and Germany and some what by Canada USA and UK. Air cushion levitation has been successfully exploited in the marine hovercraft, but it has been a noticeable failure for guided land transport system. The possibility of supporting the vehicle by magnetic forces has been postulated from the early part of this century. The present status of the magnetic levitation is that not only has a great deal of basic study and experimentation has been carried out by research groups in several countries but also some large a scale developments have been carried out. However in view of enormous costs involved in full scale system, future progress appears to be dependent on political and economic considerations rather than on the technology involved. It is a right time to review this field of advanced transportation and to decide and compare some of the different designs that have been put forward.


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