this is all that is left
n February 7, 1973, in a damp field in rural Cambridgeshire, a train floated precariously through the sky. Research Test Vehicle 31 reached 104mph as it glided somewhat noisily above the flat, featureless landscape of the Ouse Washes near the village of Earith. It was, for a tantalising moment, a sci-fi vision of a not-too-distant future when Britain’s countryside would be criss-crossed with tracked hovercraft. But it was a future that never arrived.
The hovertrain, it was hoped, would speed passengers from London to Glasgow in little more than two hours at speeds of up to 300mph. It would revolutionise long-distance travel and consign conventional trains to the history books. But the vision never materialised. In 1975, little more than five years after construction started, the test track was demolished and the project was unceremoniously mothballed. Some engineers working on the hovertrain shifted their focus to seemingly more promising maglev technology, while others moved to the United States to try and keep the hovertrain dream alive.
all that remains is the pillars that the rails once stood upon