The APT-E is sat in locomotion in Shildon, and as a kid who saw it every other week I was always fascinated by its story. The APT wasn’t a bad idea in the slightest, it was just too ahead of its time to work properly. The virgin pendolinos that replaced it are proof that tilting trains can work well
Oh hoho your _soooooooo_ close to the real answer. Pendolino is the company that snapped up the tech that Thatcher sold them on the cheap. APTe couldn't work for the same reasons that the Transputer couldn't work until SGS Thompson bought the tech. Same as the British shipbuilding industry was doomed to failure, and then the Italians bought all the equipment. See if you can spot a pattern. Maybe before the next election.
Indeed, without APT (APT-E) we never get Pendolino And 50 milion is not much for these projects - look for HS2 cost. Only one bad decision happens - BR should never sell patent for tilting trains to Italy, because some time later: Italians after bought APT tilting technology, sell back to UK in class 390 and 221, with huge profit. But conservative goverment never think in to future...
@@stanley3647 making the government pay above the odds to essentially rent-back the patent rights from a private company is, I suspect, a perfectly successful outcome in the minds of most Tories. They’d rather the government owns nothing and merely administrates.
Most of the damage was caused by the drunk journalists on its test run. Even in this video, the picture of the broken train is shown as being in the middle of nowhere, when in fact it was in Preston station. Thank Thatcher for killing it. Couldn’t be bothered with the railways after killing the mining industries off and refused the correct funding to iron out the bugs. Using the HST as an example of how quickly a train could be build and run was a typically Tory Government argument. It’s not hard to build a train as in the HST and it be consistent was quite easy as it mostly ran of flat lines without many curves. WCML is nothing but curves north of Preston and strangely enough nothing has come close to averaging the speeds the APT would have been capable of. The HST story clearly showed that if you build the train and make sure it’s fully tested then the money would have been very well received plus, a major money maker in exports. But, then, Government weren’t interested in solving the problems but killing the project as even back then their overall plan was privatised railways. Now why the HST is upheld as a brilliant train and, it is and was, but, everyone forgets that it was meant to run on one power car only. Due to many problems it was necessary to run 2 power cars to make the train reliable.
Typical British attitude we can’t spend money and need to find the cheapest option possible so rather than building new track for one of the most dense populations in the world we will tilt the trains and use our old track. Now HS2 is costing so much money we will half ar$e that too and cancel it, only to build it as it should have been built twenty years later to end up with the same high speed rail that should have been put in 70 years ago
we used tilting trains, too.... but mostly we build new rail roads... for our ICE1 to ICE4..... i am living not far from one...i can use my local train for 3 stations and can jump on a high speed train to central Switzerland! that is 1000km away! btw: we used fast trains up from 1929...!
The no1 reason why it failed was that it was supposed to be the TGV, done on the cheap, but it became clear that the "on the cheap" part was never gonna work out. Should've just got on with building the High-speed line to Glasgow or Edinburgh instead, would probably have got to Preston or Newcastle by now.
Exactly. When I was a test engineer on the APT project we knew it was a poor relation compared to TGV in France where they were investing ten times as much on new lines and infrastructure. The nail in the coffin of rail investment in the UK was Thatcher and privatisation. Her legacy continues with the myopic Sunak and Harper cutting HS2 back to HS1.5. (It no longer merits the name HS2 until there are high speed connections to Glasgow, Edinburgh Manchester and Leeds) 😡
its funny, i watched high speed trains from my kitchen window, passing the train station of my town...in 1974...me being just 6 years old.. even the TEE trains... but i didnt lived on an island....
Here in Italy, I think it was back in 1988 since the Pendolino started working And probably it's still running on slower and older lines and was even exported to other EU countries So there's a chance that he already saw it years and years ago
I suspect he meant the APT package as a whole, including the hydrokinetic brakes, centrally positioned power cars and 155mph top speed, was a dead end, rather than a tilting train, per se.
Wrong on so many levels! The HST wasn't developed at the same time as the APT-E, it followed it by some years, and the HST, like almost every other high speed railway in the world, uses Dr. Alan Wickens worn wheel profile, which was THE major breakthrough that made modern day high speed rail travel possible. The reason why the APT-Ps had to run at 125 mph in later years wasn't to do with the specification being changed, it was because the rest of BR didn't spend the money to upgrade the signalling system so it could run faster. And BR DIDN'T sell their tilt system technology to FIAT-Ferrovia, FIAT had developed the Pendolino system around the same time as BR was developing the APT-E system. The only thing the two systems have in common is that they tilt! If you want to ride on an APT type tilting train in the UK, take a ride on a Super Voyager, which DOES use an APT type tilt system, but you better hurry as Avanti are just about to take them out of service. I could go on and on, but I get tired correcting RU-vid vids about the APT project, because most of them are just plain wrong! Just to establish my bona fides, I was a tilt system development engineer on the APT-E and some of the APT-P systems too.
If you put the pendulino down the track at the same speed as the APT. there would be drinks flying off tables and puking also. If the APT speed has been reduced to pendulino speed, we would likely be still using them today.
Totally untrue the pendolinos design speed is 140mph it is the absence of ECTS that means these trains are not to run at that speed, furthermore there is also a discussion going on in rail circles to retrofit new bogies and have them do 155mph on HS2…
@@undertheradar001 indeed but tech has moved on from the days of the APT and the days of the Pendelino deployment in the UK, I am pretty certain those trains run at 140mph in Italy no bother, furthermore if they weee to run on HS2 at 155mph I am also certain they would be a running on straight track so no issues with curves anyway then back onto the wcml at 140mph
@@undertheradar001 it has actually when it did its record attempt in the early 2000s to break the APTs Glasgow to London record it topped out over 150mph on that journey and has also done so in various test runs
Lets set the record straight the APT project and the intercity 250 project as well wherent cancelled due to failure or no need it was funding unfortunately british railways where told to cancel APT as the government didnt want to pay anymore so that was it
That is one of the several reasons, yes. But I believe that there is no definitive reason, I'm sure that you will agree that the sucess of the Intercity 125 was a key factor in the cancellation of APT?
@@OnlyTheRightTrack well yes alot of things kind of worked together and in the end it was shelving still imagine a world with the apt i doubt HS2 would be such a hassle
Great use of all the archive footage. I’ve always thought that if they hadn’t had to rush them into the public, fixed the ludicrous use of water-based brake fluid instead of oil, and so on; we would instead be looking at the project as an amazing piece of British engineering, even perhaps leapfrogging the TGV. As it is, though, the TGV had massive government backing while the APT did not, and that was that.
Agreed. At the very least, we would have had a titling train that would have been considerably nicer than the Pendolinos with their appalling seat to window alignment and cramped, and sometimes noisy, interiors.
I think British Rail should have asked the then-Japan National Railways about JNR’s own experience with tilting trains. In 1973, JNR introduced the 381 Series tilting train set using a pendulum based tilting mechanism; it took JNR some time to work out the bugs on that system.
Just to illustrate how stupid this was - for £40 million, BR was able to put together a train that was if not completely ready for mass production, certainly well on its way to, using complex and groundbreaking technology in the process. In contrast, at the same time, British Leyland spent £100 million on designing the Austin Mini Metro... which was not groundbreaking in any significant (positive) way.
The interesting elephant in the room is the British network actually has the highest average speeds in the world already on account of its many 125mph lines, once HS2/3 and ECTS is completed on the ECML and WCML (give it 20 years) the UK will be out of sight to other countries…
Being anti-rail was one of Margaret Thatcher’s worst points. She should’ve been seen on trains and promoting them massively. If we’d had the same level of investment in the 1980s as today we’d be at the top of the tree!
The HSTs are definitely the most comfortable ride and probably the best customer experience put into mainstream use on the UK network. The APT was actually fantastic, and given just a slight improvement in tech to match what the designers were after would have been a huge West Coast success. They later worked out that they were over tilting, and halving the tilt angle would have given a better experience whilst keeping the high-speed ability. The Pendolinos prove that as they use a lot of the principles of the APT sold to the italians, but even they had to wait until tech caught up. As to the disastrous press coverage, allowing the journos to get pi#%@d and over eat the night before make them travel sick, not the journey.
@@Grid56 The Pendolino uses different tilt technology to the APT. Fiat developed it at around the same time. APT's tilt is used in the Voyagers though. APTs tilt did cause sickness. It was mentioned in the video that you could see but not feel it tilting. The confusion this caused was was generated the sickness. The early runs started in darkness & all was well before dawn. I am sure the hangovers made the problem worse though. Tilt was backed off later in the train's development & later tilting trains had a fatter profile as a result. I was told all that by the tilt engineer of the APT-E, who kept in touch with the project & was on the infamous publicity run. I trust his word more than that of a 3rd hand report from a journalist.
Who on Earth would release an untested train full of new technology into public service? APT-P was what the name said: a prototype. And what do you do with prototypes? You perform plenty of tests in all seasons, on different lines, with only measuring equipment and technicians on board. Perhaps a selection of test riders for the tilting system but certainly not paying passengers and the yellow press. Then you carefully check for everything that could go wrong, fix it, try again until all conditions for approval are met and it's ready for series production. Even trains that aren't much different from those existing sometimes take up to a year until they are ready for daily service. That approach takes a lot of patience but it's the only way to get to the reliability required in railway operation.
And every engineer wanted that to be the case, but as the video mentioned they were pressured into early action by the Tory government to “show results” :(
Once proven in concept you can invite the public on board. As test riders; preferably for free. I.e. did they hear any funny noices; did they go seasick in the corners. And so on.
Virgin Trains is now Avanti West Coast, while the IC 225 only runs between King’s Cross and Edinburgh, Avanti runs a large assortment of lines out of London Euston. Blackpool North, Glasgow Central, Birmingham New Street, Holyhead, Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly, and of course, Edinburgh Waverley.
Holy production quality batman. This is a lovely video. Unfortunately, I believe that the issue with APT was a lack of interest from Whitehall, and an overconfidence in their underfunded engineers within BR, coupled with the failure of BR management and their design teams to take a breath at the end of the research & design phase.
probably wont ever happen but it would definitely be a huge event if they got one of the 2 last APT's onto a charter service. Even if its slow and doesn't tilt
I had the same dream. Pete Watermen said they drained the oil out of the transformers and the atmosphere got in and corroded them. Transformers can be sent off to be custom rewired I thought to myself. My last outing to the Crewe Heritage center made it worse lol sob, sob sob. It's more than that, the windows are shot and not safe, the tilt packs are wore out, It would be easier and cheaper to build a replica the fella said
Hard to say it failed when it was only ever a test bed and the technologies developed have gone on to be used and very successfully. The way APT was publicly presented was a disaster, it was never the finished article. It was the equivalent of sending ‘The Flying Bedstead’ in to help retake the Falklands instead of the Harrier! But out of the ashes APT was a success, its technology is still going strong today 👍
£40 million. Peanuts to develop a new technology. Government penny pinching and interference. By contrast Concorde's 1962 budget was £70 million. Eventualy went way over budget and cost between £1.5 - £2.1 Billion picked up by British and French taxpayers, there were many reasons why that i won't go into here. Concorde was an ecomonic disaster, only 22 built and used on very limited routes. APT by contrast would have carried millions of passengers over its intended lifespan and with HST would have revolutionized rail travel in Britain. We Brits are very good at putting the boot in and kicking our own industries rather than supporting them. With a bit more investment and support APT would have worked.
When you are the first in field you will discover all of the pitfalls. I did travel up to Glasgow and back on it. The services was amazing The ATP Did Ultimately Succeeded. Today it is called The Pendolino!
But it didn't fail. It was probably about 95% the way there and was sold on to the Italians. From then on it became one of the most successful tilting trains in the world. We even bought it back.. kinda.
It didn't help that management was trying to push a prototype into service when the engineering team had said it really wasn't ready and more work was needed. But B.R. had to prove to the government that APT was going to work one day and they should fund it until the squadron units were in service. A desperate gamble that didn't pay off.
As an American, While HST in the U.S. has deemed to be a very difficult progress. Unlike the Rise and failure to the APT in the U.K. But sometimes that other private railways given an inspirational with prototypes is considered failed or success without condemn or a politically joke by the MEDIA. Meanwhile, living in the East Coast, Amtrak is started to slowly lack of funds, or lack of equipment, Ever since the Massive incident with an overhead wires, leaving the mass cancellations and major delays between NJ Transit and Amtrak. Deemed Amtrak became the America’s worst passenger system. In my opinion, if the Government isn’t incompetent, and the Freight Railroads are dumb enough to overtake their priority, maybe Amtrak deserves an crucially treatment, with new and modern locomotives, built more systems, get a priority, on time, and get a beautiful infrastructure for Amtrak’s generations. I ain’t no political, but I may as been, for being American. They needed to fix the system. Or the country is dead end. Anyway, that’s a good documentary.
I work in a railway in Sweden. Most long distance trains are tilted. I don't know if it is psychological, but I do feel travel is way more discomfortable in those trains and I ride them everyday so definitely should have been used. So once we had no backup trains in a specific line which is very curved and one of the more modern tilting trains had to be used. Frankly it was even dangerous. Not in the sense of derailing or crashing, but you could get hurt by walking around when it was moving. There is a reason why they are used only as a last resort in that line after all. So definitely there is such a thing such as a too curved line for them. Might be personal but I am really not a fan of this technology. However thank you for the great video! I subscribed and look forward to more in the future!
Tilting trains have been used all over the world, for decades, and new examples, such as the Avelia Liberty, are still being introduced. They wouldn’t be used if they decreased passenger comfort and safety.
We were developing technology that the rest of the world has benefitted from. That we made no money from it is the result of political decisions - as demonstrated by the introduction of Pendelino’s that were pretty much APT Lite. As a nation, we have given away a great industry to the rest of the world and now pay for the privilege of what we once done so well!
Most people don't get seas sick, air sick or car sick. for the few who do they tend to get tilt sick too. Thats why BR eventually added a little lag in their perfect balancing of tilt vs sideways force. a little sideways motion helps the balance system agree with what the eye is seeing the horizon go up and down. Does this apply to you?
@@nkt1 safety, yes. That is a red line. But comfort has been sacrificed whenever possible recently. Thinner and harder seats, being forced to book tickets at unsuitable hours because of dynamic pricing, items such as baggage being charged as extra, etc.
