Mr_Tilt

BR itself didn't really chose that day to start the APT service, certainly not the APT team themselves. It was a politically motivated date because the Treasury wanted to see some return on its money. This is the same Treasury that refused funding for five development trains, and yet they still expected the development programme to work with the three trains they did approve. Finance people NEVER understand engineering and never want to..............

No, no, NO, NO! BR DIDN'T sell the APT-P tilt technology to FIAT, and I'm getting fed up with having to tell people that! FIAT didn't want or need BR's tech, they already had their own tilt systems working quite well than you, and even in service at that time. They'd built a tilting test car just after we'd commissioned POP-Train and before E-Train too. The current Class 390s use a wholly FIAT tilt system, which are electric rather than hydraulic, and use a totally different control method. The Super Voyagers, on the other hand, DO use APT-P type tilt systems as they came via Bombardier, who actually did buy that bit of BR. This problem keeps coming up because of the way BR was privatised, with different parts of it going to different commercial groups. Thanks Mrs. Thatcher, you're STILL giving me grief after all this time! Oh yes, I did manage to do the 40th Anniversary run yesterday, and it was pretty, but still slower than in 1981......

Just an idea, but it's possible it was used a Lab Coach of some sort, so the internals could be almost any configuration you could think of.

That's the plan, yes. I did that 10 yrs ago, but just failed to take a pic of Rob Latham standing on Crewe Station.

That'll be the world's largest set of points then.

Not really about the Hornby APT-P, but almost about the real thing...... Tomorrow I'll be leaving home around 7 pm to head north to Glasgow to ride the nearest equivalent to the P-Train, Avanti West Coast's Pendolino, on the 40th Anniversary of the P-Train's first passenger carrying run the 7th December 1981. I did it 10 years ago too, and it'll be interesting to see how it compares with the major changes in operators and rolling stock in the interim.

As is all the wording of their description. Vapourware?

I've still got that Rocket loco, the one with the epicyclic gear train in the centre of the driving wheels, very clever.

I thought someone had mentioned this possibility before, but perhaps not. It's quite possible that the original design used a much smaller capacitor for the lighting, but when it came to production time, that size just wasn't available and they either had to use the 'next best' or delay the entire production run?

The APT coaches are what........?

Dear, oh dear, a fundamental misunderstanding of what it's all about on the Hornby TV programme tonight. The guy with the model shop demo layout marvelling at how well his 5-car APT set went round the (extremely sharp...) bends 'It must be the tilting system that helps it go round so fast of course' WRONG! The tilt system's got nothing to do with it, either on the model or the real thing!

Just up Steve's street, yes.

That'd be a LOT of tartan! I might have a go at trying it though, but not mass producing them!

Hardly, your normal APT-P passenger wouldn't have noticed small tilt variances like that, only around a degree or so looking at the model pics. Hard over, 9 degree failures, yes, but they weren't that common, even in the early running days.

Very prototypical, looking at many of the pics of P-Train in service. Adjust R34 on the Tilt Control module. Ah, Hornby won't have included that of course.

RTC Red and blue, no contest. That'd be Lab 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30........... etc.

As the high-ups there won't let you correct blatant lies that are posted there, I'm not surprised in the slightest!

There were only technical staff on APT-E, very few non-techies had the chance to ride aboard it, and we were more concerned with getting the darn thing to work properly for more than five minutes than to check the differences between our eyes and our ears! As no-one had done it before such an effect hadn't been observed and once we had got it working reasonably our fine tuning was designed to minimise all lateral acceleration, as per the original specification, so E-Train always ran with a fully compensated system, and P-Train inherited that philosophy. Until the P-Trains ran not enough people had been subjected to tilting trains so that a wider view of the effect couldn't be evaluated till then. P-Train was dogged by the media reports of that initial run from the very start, and later runs failing because of the appalling weather that winter didn't help one bit. And of course the media got their teeth into that as well.

Not quite, the publicity booze-up was in the Central Station Hotel the night before. I stayed there too, but more soberly, and the noise from the bar went on well into the small hours! I'm not at all sure if there was any beer available on board the train on the inaugural run actually, and the media were moving up and down the train much of the time asking the passengers how they liked it. The 'tilt sickness' amongst the media started occurring around Abington on the run, around the same time that it became light enough to actually see the horizon going up and down as the train tilted. Until then it was almost impossible to realise that it was tilting at all, so good was the control system by then. (Me biased, of course not....)

Try plugging the two Power Cars together to see if there's a basic connection between the decoder and the other motor. And don't worry about it being an 'un-authentic consist' because we did exactly that to get both PCs across the main line at York in 2004.

What a good idea THAT would be! I wonder if Pete Waterman realises the possibilities?

That's looking VERY much the business! I specially like the Mk V tilt pack hanging under there.

Better and better. But apart from the VIP Compartment it's FAR too tidy.

Cor, that does look good, I can almost smell the oil...............

The 40 th anniversary of the P-Train's entry into service is THIS year, on Dec 7th. I'm intending to do the run again on that date, if Avanti West Coast ever answer my emails, that is.