I can remember reading a Popular Science article many years ago about a High Speed Maglev Train coming to Orlando but here in the future it never came to be. You can read that article here.

The Orlando Sentinel reported on 05/14/1989: A magnetically levitated train swooshing from Orlando International Airport to Epcot Center could help redefine how Americans travel. What a marvelous way to showcase Orlando as the city of the future. But unless this vision has a connection to local rapid transit, frustrated motorists stalled on Interstate 4 won't get much thrill from glimpsing a 300 mph train zip by overhead.That's why Disney World belongs at the bargaining table. With its help now, there could be a mag-lev train by 1994 to demonstrate this red-hot technology and begin a local transit system.

Almost immediately a group of businesses on West Bronson Highway (A.K.A. US 192) lobbied to kill the project over concerns that the new trains would bypass their tourist corridor and a group of International Drive businesses were negotiating to get a terminal. The proposed route at this time would have connected the Orlando International Airport to Disney's EPCOT which seems like favoritism but in those days EPCOT was the future. The end of the route was later changed to International Drive after successful lobbying.

By September 1990 the project took a hit when questions of safety were discussed and talk about abandoning the project was surfacing but in June 1991 Gov. Lawton Chiles gave permission to Maglev Transit Inc. to operate trains.

The project got a huge boost in December 1991 when a federal highway bill earmarked $97.5 million for the demonstration project but followers may have noticed by now the changing stats. The original estimate of $500 million has now grown to $622 million and the average speed has been reduced to 250 MPH.

Supporters of the project get another reality check in April 1992 when estimates for stations are reported to be over $440 million in addition to the cost of the system. The project has also become a joint private and government project by now.

By 1993 mag-lev train fever is spreading with American Maglev Star Inc unveiling plans linking Kennedy Space Center, Port Canaveral and Interstate 95 however, by 1994 the Orlando project seems all but dead with talks of moving the government grant of $97.5 million to the newly proposed Orlando to Tampa high-speed train project.

Several attempts at building test track for the projected failed and in July 1994 Florida Transportation Secretary Ben Watts said he will recommend that the state revoke Maglev Transit Inc.'s permission to build the line because of the company's inability to prove that it can finance the project or that the train will work at all. The final blow coming in August 1994 after 6 years of empty promises by developers, state officials have finally acknowledged that the nation's first magnetically levitated train will not be built in Central Florida and the state Department of Transportation withdrew its support.

In January 1995 the Central Florida GreeneWay proposed intersection that would tie the GreeneWay to Interstate 4 near Sanford is among three projects recommended by Florida's top transportation official to receive a $97.5 million federal grant left unspent by the Maglev project. The so-called "missing link" connecting Sanford to near Disney World ease congestion and bypass I-4 got a renewed hope in 1996 when officials announced they had gather the needed $240 million to begin building. This route is open today and certainly is a time saver.

Maglev did not give up though. Maglev Technology announced plans August 2001 to build a real working example of the system and move students at Virginia's Old Dominion University across campus and a busy road on a track less than a mile long but 1 year later not much had been completed and was the technology was ultimately called "defective".

Fast forward to 2010 and you guessed it, high speed trains are back in the news.