A simulation video of a flying train is being shared with the false claim that it shows China’s ‘floating train’ whose prototype was unveiled in January this year. We found that the simulation visuals were uploaded on a YouTube handle in August 2020.
CLAIM
The viral video shows trains flying in the air and then moving on railway tracks. The claim along with the video reads: “Floating train starts in China, High speed, instead of wheels, There are boxes full of magnets & it has. High temperature super conducting..
Just Fantastic..Unbelievable [sic.]”
The video uploaded by Facebook user ‘Vibrant Videos’ had garnered 10,000 views at the time of publishing the article.
The video saw its widespread presence on Facebook and Twitter with the same claim.
The Quint received a query on the claim being made in the viral video on its WhatsApp tipline as well.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We searched on YouTube with relevant keywords and came across a video uploaded in November 2020 which carried parts of the viral video.
The narrator can be heard saying, “Dendi Komara has created stunts using train on a video game and they have gone crazily viral.”
We then came across the YouTube handle of ‘Dendi Komara Railfans ID’ and found that they had uploaded the viral visuals in August 2020 which can be viewed from 0:18 seconds.
The caption along with the video, in Malay language, when translated to English reads: "Train Down from the Sky (Game Only)." Further, the description of the video mentions: "Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019 [sic.]"
As per the information under the ‘About’ section, the YouTube handle’s main content is ‘Trainz simulator’ and the location is Indonesia.
We also looked for ‘Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019’ and came across the trailer of the said video game uploaded by a YouTube handle of N3V Games. Further, the Facebook account of ‘Trainz Simulator’ identifies itself as a video game.
ABOUT CHINA’S ‘FLOATING’ TRAIN
According to a CGTN article published on 14 January, China has unveiled the prototype of a maglev train with a designed speed of 620 kilometres/hour. The domestically developed prototype was rolled out by researchers at Chengdu’s Southwest Jiaotong University.
China’s Xinhua News had also tweeted the visuals of the maglev train prototype which uses high-temperature superconducting maglev technology.
An Independent article mentioned that the train is without wheels and makes use of magnets which “allow it to hover just above the track, resulting in frictionless, faster travel.”
Evidently, a simulation video of flying train was falsely claimed to be China’s ‘floating’ train.
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