You’re faced with 2 distinct challenges in making a maglev train: levitation and propulsion.
Levitation
The basic problem you’ll have to handle in getting a car containing one or more permanent magnets to levitate over a track containing an electromagnet (what I gather you track is) is the car’s tendency to slip sideways or flip over to align its magnetic field with the track’s.
This can be countered with a combination of car shape and side (“U shaped”) or even overhanging (“C shaped” ) guide rails, but simple, non-magnetic rails will result in the car being pressed against them by some of the levitating magnetic force, resulting in friction, defeating the purpose of magnetic levitation.
Therefore, I think you’ll want to consider wrapping coil wire to make 2 smaller version of the main track coil, and using them as side rails, and adding smaller side magnets to the car. Mounting the side rails above the track to form a “trough” in which the car rides, of below to form a “box” that the car overhangs on both sides are fairly equivalent.
If this seems too much work, you could try minimizing friction with the guide rails by simply using something slick, like plastic card stock. I just stuck together a gizmo of refrigerator magnets (the kind with metal magnets inside thick plastic bodies, not the flat, flexible cutout kind) and the scraps of punchout plastic ID cards, and while not frictionless, the magnet floated stably and with what felt like less friction than when just slid along on top of the plastic card stuff.
Note that, per
Earshaw’s theorem, for any fixed configuration of magnets to support the car stably, the car must move. When still, some part of it will touch a guide rail, or, if there’s no rail, fall off the track.
Propulsion
The simplest way to propel the car is non-magnetically – a small electric or rubber-band powered propeller, for instance, or simply sloping your track to allow gravity to move the car. If your goal is to have both magnetic levitation and propulsion, however, you’ll need something more complicated.
If your track, either the bed or the side rails, consists of short sections of separately switchable electromagnets, you can propel the car by switching them (either off and on, or reversing polarity) in coordination with the movement of the car. With a well laid out switchboard control, I suspect this could be managed by hand. Alternately, if you have switches that can be computer controlled and programming skill, a software solution might work. Some scheme involving variable, very slowly alternating current to the (multiple) coils might work. I don’t think any propulsion scheme where the entire track coil is one circuit is possible.
Some final words: Halbach arrays. Though usually thought of in connection with the
Inductrack maglev scheme, in which permanent magnets in the car generate current and magnetic fields in unpowered, conductive track coils, its advantages should also be applicable to a powered track such as the one you’re building. You can buy powerful little cubical magnets ideal for building a Halbach array (eg: from sites such as
this one), though clamping and gluing them together is a dexterity challenge not to be taken lightly!
Good luck, and post pictures

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