The office granted $94,000 for the next year to keep the research moving forward, even though the train is not.

The previous round of funding, a $2 million Federal Railroad Administration grant, ran out in mid-May - seven years into the project - without producing a working prototype of a low-cost magnetically levitating train.

But ODU scientists are so confident that they're close to a breakthrough that they've volunteered their time for the past month and persuaded the research office to provide the extra funding.

"We believe there are great possibilities, so we want to keep the project on and alive," said Mohammad Karim , ODU's vice president for research.

The money comes from a general research fund established from savings from other grants awarded to ODU for research.

"It's a significant statement of support from the university," said Jeremiah Creedon , ODU's director of transportation research.

The goal within the next year is to produce a demonstration maglev vehicle that levitates smoothly and propels a short distance down an elevated guideway that traverses the campus. Maglev uses magnets to float a train over elevated tracks.

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If that's accomplished, Creedon is optimistic that the university can attract new research money to refine the technology and eventually create a high-tech, low-cost mass transit system.

"We're providing bridge funding....  because we believe we are quite close to receiving federal money from a source we'd like to keep unnamed at this time," Karim said.

A working maglev vehicle has eluded ODU for seven years.

Georgia-based American Maglev Technology Inc. and its partners, including Lockheed Martin Corp., promised in 1999 to deliver a working maglev transportation system by the fall of 2002 .

Technical glitches, cost overruns, unpaid bills and lawsuits derailed the project, though, and the train sat idle for nearly two years .

The train levitated and moved, but instead of floating on a cushion of air, it bumped, rattled and vibrated.

With $14 million in state and private money already spent, federal authorities came forward in April 2004 with $2 million to try to fix it. That's when ODU took control of the money and the work.

ODU now has control of the guideway, too. Instead of having the columns and tracks removed at American Maglev's expense, as provided for in the original contract, the university has taken ownership of the 3,200-foot -long guideway.

After maglev's ill-fated start, expectations changed. It's no longer a transportation project, but a research project.

ODU officials say the system could be years and millions of dollars away from being usable as mass transit.

Other efforts around the county, and the world, to create an affordable maglev system have yet to succeed. The only commercial maglev in the world, a high-speed train in China, cost billions to develop and billions more to build.

In the past two years , efforts headed by aerospace engineering professor Thomas Albert s to rework the American Maglev system have been fruitful, Creedon said.

Alberts' team developed a laboratory, built a small-scale test sled, and added new computers, magnets and other equipment. They also changed the guideway.

Laboratory tests have progressed from a setup that uses one magnet to one that uses six magnets, essentially half of the chassis of the vehicle that's sitting outside on the guideway.

The system is becoming more stable, tests show, but there still are some vibrations, Creedon and Alberts said.

The ODU project, which experts say was underfunded from the start, has been considered "a real setback to the whole maglev community because of the overblown set of promises that didn't materialize," said Larry Blow , a consultant to other maglev projects and a past critic of the project at ODU.

Blow said the additional $94,000 won't be enough to "salvage the project," yet he's encouraged that it will keep the technical work going and could spur more investment.

"At the very least, a few lucky young scientists/engineers will get some invaluable hands-on training in the intricacies of designing and testing maglev subsystems," Blow said. "In time, it's my hope that they will evolve into the next generation of maglev entrepreneurs."