Hover & Fly

Very much part of the ‘White Heat of Technology’ prevalent in Britain in the 1960s, Tracked Hovercraft was an experimental high-speed train combining two great British inventions, the hovercraft and the linear induction motor. The idea was to produce a train that could deliver 250mph inter-city services with lower capital costs than conventional high-speed railways. In concept, it was similar to the French Aérotrain (see above) and other hovertrain experiments of the 1960s, and it suffered a similar fate when funding was cut and it was cancelled in 1973.

Having developed the technology using scale models, the Tracked Hovercraft team spent several years persuading the UK Government to fund a full-size test track and train.

In the early-1970s, an elevated test track was eventually built between Earith and Denver