Mr_Tilt

Quote Simon Kohler's blog :- 'Of course it is not the first time that an APT has been produced. Back in 1980 Hornby produced a 5 car APT-P, which was produced both as a train set and a train pack. The launch of the model was approximately one year before the 1:1 version actually carried any passengers other than BR personnel as the train had been dogged by numerous operating problems. However, in 1984 after a great deal of development work the three APT-P trains that had been initially built entered revenue earning service. Unfortunately by then the damage to the trains reputation had been done and each of the three units over a period of time were gradually and quietly withdrawn from service.' With the greatest of respect, COBBLERS! A) The two APTs are very different trains and that first sentence sounds very much like sour grapes to me. And note that Rapido don't get a name check, unlike Bachmann later on. B)The launch of Hornby's APT-P was the SAME year in which the 1:1 scale version carried it first passengers, as that was on Dec 7th 1981 and I was one of them! I still have the ticket too. There may have been only 13 real fare paying passengers on that first run, but we weren't BR staff. OK, so some of us were EX-BR staff but I paid for my full price ticket with MY money. The P-Trains were taken out of service after a few days, but they were returned to service after a relatively short period during 1982, long before 1984! As for Sun reporters, it was a good thing the prat didn't phone me and ask what the difference between the two tilt systems were. I'd have volunteered to show him, with the aid of a 3000 psi hydraulic hose and a shut-off valve.....

It hasn't been lost on us that the GRC will be pretty much the same length as the Test Track, and it's Berne Gauge too.... It's not all that far from the Old Dalby site either. As for running the train again it would cost OODLES of money, but it's such a large amount we haven't even thought about it seriously, there really isn't a way of calculating it. But the biggest problem is lack of expertise in most of the areas of the train, apart from tilt and instrumentation that is. We'd also need lots more drawings and schematics than we have to hand at present, even though the NRM have vast quantities of them stashed away somewhere, but no-one seems to know where. The fact that they still exist is due to my wife, who when told to destroy them put the whole lot in boxes in the RTC basement and wrote 'NRM York' on the boxes before getting them all shipped up there back in 1977 or so.

One thing about adding more seats in extra Trailer Cars that you'll need to note is that the Rapido model of TC1 includes an accurately shaped and sized tilt pack in the Service Bay area behind the VIP compartment. As it's about the size of three fridges side by side it takes up a LOT of seat space so you'd maybe best assume that your extra cars have had the APT-P Mk 5 tilt packs installed under the floor and carve away the pack that's already there. If you leave the original one there your 1/76 scale passengers will all be sitting down the OTHER end to get away from that noisy and oily tilt pack!

That wibble must be where I keep patting its nose every time I see it these days. The scans look really excellent Jason, they got the shape down pat.

Some of the PC2 turbines will turn over Paul as we've actually done it a few times, but we dare not actually try to fire one up inside the museum at Shildon! In any case we'd need some proper control connections and they orginally went via the steering beam to TC2. As TC2 is now the other side of the fire break we'd have to re-connect and extend a large number of cables for which we have no drawings, so it's unlikely we could do that even in the medium term. The Conservation and Support Group does have two zero houred turbines on support stands as well, and there's a far better chance that one of those might be capable of being powered up, but please don't hold your breath....

Adrian's point about air flow is well made. The APT-E Power Cars' entire side grilles are the intakes for the turbines and if the grilles themselves weren't there you'd be able to see the zillions of tubular air filters hidden behind them. Walking down the centre of the Power Cars was a noisy and hot operation and there weren't any hand rails to guard people from the turbines on those H&S free days. We've had to put hand rails up inside PC2 in the Locomotion museum now even though the turbines DON'T run, but you can get a bit of an idea what it was like back in the 70s.

At a rough guess, and without any input form anyone at BR when I was there, I'd say the most likely candidate would have been the Tyne. Even the least powerful variant of the Tyne pushed out about 4,500 hp, so two of them would have equalled the APT-P Power Cars. The Tyne was relatively compact too, being about 9 ft long and 4.5 ft in diameter and it only weighed just over a ton. Of course that was without a generator or alternator attached to it.

We're talking about the maximum all-out speed of the train here, and turbines don't usually run at 100% all the time. I guess in service a turbine APT would have been scheduled at 140 mph or with different engines at 155 mph. Even before the 1973 fuel crisis service gas turbine powered APTs would not have used multiple Leyland turbines, just too many things to go wrong. Maybe Rolls Royce could have been persuaded to be practical and come up with something to do the job. It's all a bit of a 'What If' scenario as the turbine wasn't a practical solution past 1973.

I think you may have to wait a bit for an O gauge version..... You need to beware of any APD drawings as the state of the train was very date dependant. We had two major rebuilds and numerous updates, almost one between each set of tests, so unless your drawings are dated sometime in early to middle 1975 they won't depict the train as it is at the moment. There wasn't any need to, the train was already designed to do 155 mph anyway, including gear ratios etc. If you check back on some of my earlier posts you'll see I put the point that had we not had the problems with the turbine in PC2 we'd have been able to attempt 155 in the cooler hours of that Sunday morning, when the turbines would be producing more power. As it was by the time we'd sorted out the manual control system for the faulty turbine set it was almost noon and very hot, thus limiting all of the turbine's outputs.

That may be be quite difficult to sort out and it would need a lot of research talking to the rest of the team. One thing that definitely benefitted was the ECML as the Class 91s are pretty much non-tilting APT-P power cars with cabs, and their Chief Engineer was Mike Newman from the APT team. Many of us were dispersed into other, non-rail, industries though, so the benefits of our experiences were somewhat diluted.

It was only a slight diversion, and it was ASLEF's fault anyway.....

Democracy rules OK, or not, as the case may be. It sounds just like Communist era Russia to me.....

Yes, sorry, but I was just looking at a brochure for the LRC at the time. And the ASLEF people in Derby certainly made a lot of noise about wanting more pay for driving at 100 mph and over when I was there, although not the six drivers we had on the project itself.

Jason's equivalent book on the Canadian LRC train was sold seperately, so there's a precedent for selling the APT-E book on its own too. Re the ASLEF blacking of the train in 1972, they blacked the Class 252 HST prototype too because it also had a single manned cab originally. In addition they wanted extra pay for driving trains that were capable of over 100 mph, no matter if they were ACTUALLY running at over 100 mph or not! In the HST's case there was space to move the driver's seat to one side and add a secondman's seat, but in E-Train's case it was impossible because of the crash beams that were either side of the cab. That resulted in an additional jump seat being bolted to the rear door that led into the Power Car itself and having FOUR people in the front cab during all the subsequent movements. Those of you who have been in PC2's cab at Shildon will know how tight it is in there anyway, let alone with three people sitting in a row across the rear bulkhead!

Ian Allan only did one print run of 'A Promise Unfullfilled' and didn't care about doing a re-print, and they were asked 3-4 times by people in my circle, spoilsports. It's quite difficult to find these days, and can go for quite a price too, as Shane said. Teh train is mentioned quite a bit in various books of the period but not in any great detail, and 'A Promise Unfullfilled' is really the only one with the in-depth story. But the Rapido model will come with a book about the train included, covering not only it's 'first life' under BR ownership, but also its 'second life' in preservation. I've written the first draft of the first half already, and Paul Leadley is doing the second half, with some input from me now and then.

That's on the Rapido flyer as well, but the model will actually have E1T bogies according to the computer model files I've seen. Have no fear.

I can't make the vid work anywhere Paul. All I see on here is lots of lines of text in ever decreasing font sizes, I'm running Win7 and IE9.

That's interesting, I hadn't considered that juxtaposition....... In 1972 when I was working on E-Train I used to do aircraft kit reviews for 'Scale Models' magazine and Matt Irvine, who invented K9, did other reviews for the same mag and we met at MAP's offices now and then. I wonder if I mentioned E-Train to him and got him looking at the shape etc? I must ask him next time I see him. That's very interesting Mick, it hadn't occured to me before but the RTC would make a great layout with a HUGE variety of different locos and rolling stock. You could even run mainline stuff along the Derby - Trent Junction line in the background. And there'd be no trouble in finding details of the structures etc as it's all still there.

There's all sorts of information in that photo. The whole aero probe isn't fitted, just its mounting tube, the real thing was maybe 3-4 ft longer. There's also the dreaded oil lamp bracket and I can tell you that it's PC1 we're looking at. Why? Because it has two wiper blades and the video-cam in the corner of the windscreen. PC2 only had one wiper blade and no video-cam. I wonder if anyone will be mad enough to paint a smile on their E-Train model?

BR must have cloned me without me noticing then.

So do they use oil lamps now? And how would they know that the oil lamp wouldn't a] run out oil or b] not get blown out?

I never knew that before Rob, thanks for the info. It makes you wonder just HOW much BR were ready for the 20th century, let alone the 21st!

AND the oil lamp bracket too!

Actually it did, although not under its own power and not the whole train. PC1 and PC2 were hauled across the ECML to Thrall Yard on 11-11-2004 by an 08 Shunter and we DID have a lamp (but not an oil lamp) on the back, but we couldn't find the bracket iron itself and had to use string to hang it off the crash jack.

Got it in one Fenman. The BR Rule book said we had to carry an oil lamp on the rear of the train so the Plastics Development Unit (PDU), who moulded the nose cone and all the doors on the train, modified the nose to take a small slot. We had a short flat bar made up to fit in the slot onto which a standard BR oil lamp would fit, but I can't recall us ever using it apart from when Senior Inspectors were around. All this despite the fact that we had high intensity nose and tail lamps built in to the nose cone! Naturally the 252 HST set DIDN'T have an oil lamp bracket, one rule for them, one rule for us..... And no, it didn't even get to any part of Scotland, unlike POP-Train and Hastings Coach.