Why Locomotives Can Pull So Much - it's a magic secret I would have never guessed

Magnetic Levitation is really good - BUT - for very high field strengths, you NEED very low resistance wires in the electromagnets, and that usually involves either very large aircooled electromagnets, or superconducting extremely cold electromagnets, which makes for extremely expensive track, on a per Km basis - extremely expensive to buy and extremely expensive to operate... If fuel was $2 a liter, for conventinal trains, then it's $250 a liter for the maglev trains.... as a vague reference to track and running costs, not fuel costs per sae. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity ----- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev

I have seen a million trains start up and slowly get moving... and not once ever, did I ever put 2 and 2 together about the individual sticking friction of each wagon or carriage, being bumped into motion, one at a time, by enabling some slack in the coupling mechanism - I have pulled them out and repaired the coupling mechanisms - usually just a big pramid of stacked rubber blocks... They are sort of like rubber engine mounting blocks, but one is below the engine and one is above the engine - a push pull rubber bearing.... so it's "Bang" and one wagon moves and then Bang" and the next wagon moves - and so on and so forth down through the entire train.... I would have never thought of that in a million fucking years... I just though the rubber block mechanisims were just shock absorbers....