A system that includes an elongate cylindrical vehicle operable to travel along a similarly-shaped, trough-like guideway. At stations along the guideway, the vehicle is supported by wheels, but between stations it levitates at about 25 centimeters above the inside guideway surface. Levitation of the moving vehicle is effected by interaction between magnetic dipole fields provided by superconducting coils or permanent magnets disposed over substantially the whole lower surface area of the vehicle and a pair of spaced conducting strips located on the guideway inner surface and oriented parallel to the longitudinal axis of the guideway throughout its length. The vehicle is free to rotate or pivot about its longitudinal axis and this, coupled with the very resilient support over its entire length, permits it to travel at 200 kilometers per hour and beyond with minimum discomfort to passengers being transported. The magnetic dipole fields must be of the order of 1,000 to 3,000 gauss at a distance of 25 centimeters from the vehicle to give the support necessary to maintain the 25 centimeter clearance. The necessary propelling force is supplied by a polyphase winding which is disposed in the lower portion of the guideway between the conducting strips; the winding produces a traveling-wave magnetic field that interacts with the magnetic dipole fields. Between stations synchronous operation is accomplished by employing a.c. power input with a cycloconverter, i.e., an a-c to a-c converter, to reduce the input frequency to an appropriate ratio. Acceleration and deceleration of the vehicle is accomplished by varying the frequency of the cycloconverter to provide synchronous interaction between the magnetic field of the winding and the magnetic dipole fields of the superconducting coils as the vehicle accelerates. Provision is made for switching vehicles, and a novel method of guideway fabrication is disclosed.