The Train that Floats in the Sky

A new film about Cambridgeshire’s remarkable high-speed hovertrain experiment of the 1960s and ‘70s.

This film has been produced with filmmaker Nick Edwards through the University's Cambridge Archaeological Unit, in partnership with Peterborough’s Railworld, as part of the Heritage Lottery Fund grant-aided Ouse Washes Landscape Partnership.

The origins of applying a hovering principle to high-speed ground transport were conceived in the early 1960s, and ‘propelled’ in 1967 by government allocation of £5.25 million through which Tracked Hovercraft Ltd was formed. With the company’s offices and laboratories based in Cambridge, the construction of a full scale test track – a gigantic monorail – was begun in 1969 along the Old Bedford River between the fenland villages of Earith and Sutton Gault.

This grand Utopian experiment aimed towards the fastest commuter transport in the world, but ended in 1973. The film explores the local and physical legacy of the project, and what might have occurred had it succeeded.