I’ll open with the British Rail APT-E (1972-76), a test bed for the tilting advanced passenger train. Unfortunately the whole project (£46m) came to nothing in the end. This thing looks like the 10:22 to the Thunderdome and sounded mental with its four screaming gas turbines.

Never being one to miss the opportunity to shove some of my artwork up 😀

[url=https://flic.kr/p/29r7bj9]Deltic 55[/url] by bin lid, on Flickr

“Mine’s more pointy that yours”

Over ten years ago since the French did this

P=mv

I travelled from Glasgow to London on the Advanced Passenger Train 🙂

Love those APT’s – I remember seeing one very early in my life – perhaps 1982 or so? Amazing thing – but they only lasted a couple of months didn’t they?

Anyway, my earliest childhood memory was on this train and carraige – and my sister will be on it with her family today as they return home.

Russia had the idea MOAR power = quicker trains

scuttler – that is traction in the real sense!

meerak – I’m am so jealous. What was it like?

but they only lasted a couple of months didn’t they

Yup, the train the accountants killed

37425. Concrete Bob. My favourite loco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef0RvGWVxR8

@ wwaswas: Streamline Moderne never looked better.

They all look they’re from the film Robots don’t they 🙂

Nice one Binners

The Jawn Henry, a coal-powered steam turbine beast arguably the most powerful steam locomotive ever built.

Southern Pacific AC-12 Cab Forward, a wonderfully elegant solution to the problems of drivers suffocating in the long snow sheds over Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada.

All scrapped except one single non-working example at the California State Railway Museum in Sacramento, which I recommend.

the problems of drivers suffocating in the long snow sheds

You wonder how many they lost before they decided to do anything about it.

You wonder how many they lost before they decided to do anything about it.

Not many I don’t believe, to be fair, but visibility was obviously pretty dire too with a normal steam loco through a long tunnel.

They obviously had to be oil fired because there was no way to get the coal from the tender with the footplate up front. They were only in service for just over a decade, with less than 15 years between the first one being rolled out and the last one being withdrawn. Crying shame.

On modern stuff I’m a big fan of class 92s, even if they’re a bit of a pain by all accounts:

There’s a small train museum just outside Crewe station, Rail Heritage Centre . There’s an APT parked up there as one of the main attractions, you pass it as you approach from the north. Open at weekends and Bank Holidays through the summer.

The sole surviving bits of APT, that’s the APT-P (prototype) rather than the APT-E (experimental) as above.

A bit of a sorry state of affairs really, it had all the potential to be a roaring success, but instead was a total flop!

I didn’t realise that the APT project basically removed the tilt and became the 225 in the end, nice bit of rebranding.

And I think the tilt has now made it into the class 390….

Sort of, it’s quite roundabout.

We sold the technology to the Italians who developed it further in parallel with their own design. It’s very similar to that in the 221 Super Voyagers, and the system in the 390 Pendolinos certainly has its origins in the APT, but far more distantly.

The 225 (comprising a Class 91, mk4 coaches and a DVT) likewise isn’t really derived from the APT – not least the APT was designed for the curving WCML (hence the tilt) whilst the class 91s were never designed to tilt as it’s less beneficial on the far-straighter East Coast Main Line. 91s were designed before the APT had been withdrawn; the Intercity 250 was the more obvious spiritual successor to the APT, but that too was canned before production ever began. Confusingly the mk4 coaches were designed with tilting in mind (there’s a taper on the body ends to avoid them hitting lineside structures) but it never came close to fruition.

Once the APT faltered we continued with the class 86 and 87 electrics with mk2 and mk3 coaches which preceded the APT. Class 90s came along in the late 80s, still hauling the older stock, and ultimately nothing changed until the Pendolinos appeared in the early 2000s.

I worked on commissioning the Class 90s and 91s at BREL in Crewe in the late 80s.  I was working for GEC Traction at the time who supplied to propulsion control equipment and motors.

The main hand-me-down from APT was the reduction in unslung weight achieved by moving the traction motors into the body. The bogies were powered through motor/cardan shaft/gearbox arrangements.

What it sez on the label!

I had a little cab ride on one of these when I was in Canadia, staying with a conductor in Med Hat…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/ZDqWde]085

[url=https://flic.kr/p/ZACuLN]084

Some trains he was on could be 1.5 miles long.

Shay Engine –  for when you really need to climb something steep:

Must go to the Romney Hythe & Dymchurch!

Me in the 70’s on my trainset. South West Gas Shunter at  Seabank Avonmouth.

Donated to Bristol Harbourside.

Its the wrong colour now  ;(

On the APT, I’ve got the Honrby trainset of it.

Me at the controls of APT-P 370003 at Crewe Heritage Centre.

Bigger wheels are nicer …