Mr_Tilt

And a heck of a lot more on the Rapido E-Train as well! Legomanbiffo's sound files for the E-Train cam from various sources, some from the P-Train at Crewe as both used the same hydraulic pump for the tilt system and the diesel APUs were the same too. In fact the first two P-Train APUs were the same two units that we had aboard PC1 & 2 on E-Train, and were stripped out once we delivered E-Train to the NRM. Much of the P-Train at Crewe still works so many of the sounds are available, and using a 91 for the traction sounds would be pretty close as a 91 and a P-Train used the same motor and a very similar gearbox. The turbine sounds for E-Train were unobtainable as the only one still running is in a truck and that sound track is nothing like a train track. We found a startup track from an SNCF RTG unit starting its Turbomeca Turmo engines, and that was pretty darn close. Legomanbiffo then blended it in with other turbine sounds to produce a pretty authentic sounding E-Train track. It's not simple, but these things can be done with the skills he has.

Sold to you by a profiteer then.

You were screwed, the first edition ones never were that price new.

The engineering needed to get the articulated inter-car connectors to work on the Rapido APT-E is pretty mind boggling as, just like an APT-P, they need to withstand both curving and tilting of both cars at the same time. Bill Schneider, Rapido's engineer, ingeniously got round the tilt problem by ensuring both vehicles tilted to almost the same angle at the same time. Un-prototypical, but I'm probably the only person who'd actually notice it when 'in service'.

Why is it running with the pantograph down? Or even HOW is it running etc. etc? Hardly prototypical........

Hmmmm, if anything I'd have said that Rapido's version of TC1 would be likely to be more accurate as that's the end they scanned. If their model is actually wrong it's down to me and Paul I'm afraid as we were the 'end stop' for the detail quality control of the CAD design.

Hello Les, Don't forget that the Trailer Cars are the wrong way round at Shildon, but I'm not 100% sure if that makes a difference................

No, none of us could feel we were tilting, not even me! At that time of the morning in December it was pitch dark and once out of Glasgow itself it was as if they'd straightened out the entire track. I knew that section pretty well from our tests in the 70s and I couldn't tell we were curving and tilting at all. At that time the P-Train was using a fully compensated tilt system so there should have been zero cant deficiency on the curves, and there was. Only when we got some distance south, around Abington, did it get light enough to see the horizon going up and down as the train tilted, and then many of the hung-over media decided that tilting trains made you sick.................

There were only 13 fare paying customers on that first southbound trip, one of them being me. The ones in the bar getting slewed at BR's expense were the media crowd, who then complained that the tilt made them sick. But not until they realised they WERE tilting a considerable distance down the line. Those of us who paid for our tickets didn't get sick..................

You're treading on shaky ground there...................................

Wonderful set of pics of the P-Train at the C&W Works Open Day. I missed that as I'd left BR a few months earlier and was living in Berlin at the time.

But it's almost the same as a Voyager or a Pendelino, and for the same reason. If the body tilts it has to be that shape or you'd smite the bridges and signals etc.

I could tell about a few Railway Technical Centre Christmas Parties, but perhaps I better not! And they WEREN'T held inside any of the test trains............

I'm SO glad you liked the sound track. Legoman Biffo and I spent ages swapping various sound files back and forth with Ian asking 'Which one sounds the more authentic?' and me racking my brains to remember. The actual turbine startup track was from an SNCF RTG set on it's last run, but the sound of their Turbomeca Turmos was JUST like E-Train's Leylands, very handy. The tilt pack sound came from the P-Train at Crewe as the Mk V tilt packs there used the same pump (A Lucas PM125 for the techies....) as E-Train's Mk 2s etc. etc.

I can't remember where they came from, but they were lurking around the RTC yard for ages, long before the first E-Train Power Car arrived. Only then were the big spreaders added to go between the bogie and the body shell, presumably because no-one was quite sure how accurate Metro-Cammell had built it until we had it to measure.

You should see the ones we used on E-Train's Power Cars before we had any E1s. Those were REALLY hi-tech...........

The P-Train couplers could rotate quite freely, within limits, relative to the vehicle body, but not relative to each other. That was because they had to consider the 'opposite tilt' failure case where one vehicle had failed hard-over in one direction, and the coupled vehicle had failed hard-over in the opposite direction. That'd be 24 degrees of tilt relative to each other! That should be impossible with new Hornby model if the tilt system is anything like the 2080 version, the cams just won't allow that sort of 'failure'.

Very interesting pic that, one of the early production Trailer Cars at the Carriage & Wagon Works Open Day. I see they don't want anyone to see the 'hi-tech' handling bogies.

Enough to make you weep................

Towards the end of the P-Train's running no-one ever seemed to bother too much how well the tilt system was adjusted. Hardly surprising as they didn't carry any paying passengers on the test runs anyway, and the test crew would have been in the instrumented Trailer Car, whichever one that was. You can bet THAT one was adjusted within a couple of seconds of arc! Because of the way the control valves worked each channel of the system had to be adjusted correctly, so 'Down' was directly through the centre of the floor, before each run after the train had been powered up. It was just a matter of adjusting a small control potentiometer to 'zero' the floor with the aid of a spirit level. Some of us didn't need spirit levels, I can still tell the angle of a surface I'm standing on to within 1/2 degree to this day, which amazes many people as they just don't believe it's possible, but it's what I did from back in 1971, so it's ingrained in my balance system I guess. I once astonished a Chef du Train aboard a Eurostar by telling him how much cant deficiency his train was running at during a trip back from Paris in the 2000s. Without the aid of any instrumentation, I might add...........

Yes, I agree. Having saved them to disc I can see the shot with the observation cupola is quite a bit later in time, 49005 mis a LOT more knackered in that shot.

Does it have THREE Power Cars in the formation? Or are some pics taken from the other side?

As for the attempt on the Northbound P-Train's record, it's not actually comparing apples with apples. The signalling has been improved since then, and many curves have been eased too, but P-Train was allowed up to 140 mph IIRC, whereas the 390s are stuck with 125 mph max. I have no doubt that they'll do it one day, and so they should after all this time, but it's nice to think that we got it pretty well right back then.

And APT-E still holds the UK non-electrified rail speed record at 152.3 mph. And that goes back to 1975 too.