APT-E: The Tilting Tech Fest, a 1970s Vision of the Future | Curator with a Camera
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- Опубликовано: 26 сен 2024
- Join Anthony Coulls for a detailed tour of the Advanced Passenger Train Experimental (APT-E) at Locomotion in Shildon, a truly enormous part of our collection with both a power car and a trailer car containing vast swathes of testing and recording equipment.
From tilting mechanisms to toilets containing a 50-year-old bar of British Railways soap, Anthony explores the entirety of this incredible vehicle which explored the viability of future technologies through the vision of aerospace expert Dr Alan Wickens.
While it was never put into production, APT-E was not short of achievements, one of the most noteworthy being its top speed of 152.3mph-officially still the fastest speed attained by a non-electrified rail vehicle in the UK.
Enjoy the ride!
To find out more about Locomotion, visit www.locomotion...
If it's the National Railway Museum in York you're looking for, head to www.railwaymus...
It still looks futuristic
Na bro
It looks kinda sh*t
Seeing one of these in late 74/early 75 blasting through Northamptonshire is something I'll never forget.
This is different! Thank you for making this series, especially when we can see in exhibits that we can’t usually get into (HST, APT and Shinkansen cab, for example)
Couldn't believe it when I heard that York National Rail system are the only museum outside Japan to have a Shinkansen carriage. I would have thought I bunch around the world would want one. Better than the scrap heap.
The APT was WAAAAYY ahead of it's time.
It's the Lamborghini Countach of trains :)
This takes me back to the 70's. I don not recall wether it was 75 or 76 I saw this train at Derby on an open day. I recall the electronics and the seats inside. There was exitement over this train. I recall the High Speed Train being the stop gap project while this was being developed. I remember the men working on it were not railway men, one was my uncle who was an engineer from Rolls Royce aero engines, I recall him saying how much aerospace technology, design and thinking was in the train.
Amazing technology even today. Very interesting to see the gubbins of it. You really want to get the APT from Crewe Heritage to stand beside it, instead of it stood outside in all weather's slowly rotting away, a crying shame. The two together would look superb. Go for it, and whilst there get the HST power car as well. What a trio that would make.
anthony coulls is the best curator at the nrm, no doubt.
APT-E, more like an aircraft on rail wheels than a train. Love the 1970s tech in there! And how appropriate that Kit Spackman, aka Mr. Tilt is still involved with it..
Richard Trevithick, what a genius. He never gets the recognition he deserved. Pleased to see you mention him here 😊
The true father of the railways. If not, the grandfather of them.
Nice to see it restored and looking very presentable, I remember seeing this in a rather "unrestored" state in the shunting yard at the back of the National Railway Museum when I was a child back in the early 90s!
APT-E is my favorite BR HST. I’ve always loved it’s design, it’s turbine power cars, and that amazing tilt system. I’m glad the entire set was preserved.
I remember seeing this train in books when I was in junior school in the 70s . I’ve had a fascination for it ever since
I could be mistaken, but from what I've watched about the APT's short history, because the museum got the prototype they didn't want the final version of the APT, so when BR gave up on it, it was merely left to rot on a siding until a bunch of volunteers took it in to restore it. Both units represent different chapters of the same piece of rail history, and really both deserve proper museum space.
In Denmark we've got issues with curvy track as well, especially in the western parts of the country where the lines were built on the cheap in the mid-1800s, but because tilting trains are heavy and expensive they've decided to instead straighten out the track as much as possible wherever they can, which really means they're levelling out a lot of land to build "shortcuts" across curves. It's a rather substantial project and due to the current world situation and problems with the contractors, it's currently uncertain when the straightened lines will be ready.
Amazing that the train and it's tech are 50 years old !
We saw it at Locomotion boy was it a trip back in time looking at it & learning more about this stunning piece of machinery
Cool! An interesting watch! I hope you make a video on LMS Stanier 5mt 5000
Just seen this video pop up; already know I'm in for a treat! 😄
I remember as a child in the latter half of the 1970s seeing APT -E sitting forlorn and decaying in a yard adjacent to the Railway Museum for what seemed years, I was a regular visitor back then. Wonderful to see it under cover and along with the team behind it getting the attention and recognition it deserves. Many thanks.
Very interesting, would have liked to have seen the gas turbines, the heart of the machine.
Love the crane cams sticker!
What an incredible machine, I absolutely love the APT-E it truly is an amazing piece of kit. I really need to get back to Shildon again.
“Translates into quite a lot of miles per hour” that’s probably the best explanation for converting KPH into MPH ever😉.
I'm not sure when I'll make it to York, so these videos are just great. Thanks for doing them!
Thank you! That was so interesting, so exciting. I wonder if today we have in the UK such capable engineering talent. It would be marvellous if we have!
That analogue test equipment! Very HP-chic :) no doubt many timers, pulse counters, phase measurement devices, etc
She looks amazing last time I seen her she was outside looking sad for herself I remember thinking that she was a amazing piece of 80 s kit that is worth saving glad u did
Anthony, you didn't listen to my talk closely enough. :-) The 'Lane Change' switch changes which Tilt Control Channel is being used on each vehicle, there being two sets of accelerometers, control electronics and control valves in each tilt pack.
It's been a while, sorry!
Still my favourite looking train. Love it.
Great video - I've always wanted to see inside the APT-E! Its amazing that to drive it, there's a little speed lever, a brake lever, horn - and that's about it!
That’s rare! You’re out of the museum for a change!
I love this series so much. Fantastic to get uo close and personal with some of my favourite locos in the collection!
Wonderful ,so interesting! Thankyou curator with a camera!
A fascinating insight.
I thought I had seen all the BR footage of the unit on test, but there were a few clips in this collation that were new to me.
A great British design and build.
Back in the when the UK did that sort of thing.
...and it should be fully restored and running. The amount of work Paul Leadley, Kit "Mr Tilt" Spackman and other volunteers was amazing. IT's a real shame. Imagine hearing those 4 gas turbines in each power car again!!!!! As should the APT-P at Crewe!!!
This was so cool. As always, thank you for producing these videos!
I remember in the 70’s the fronts of the power units being made at the fibreglass shop at Derby Carriage works.
Shildon is the best museum ever
The "Lane Change" is probably referring to control lanes. General a signal path, i.e. the electrical path from an operator interface control (button, switch, lever, etc etc) to the thing it controls, or from a sensor to either a display or recording device is referred to as a lane. Generally for anything really important good design practice would be to have multiple identical lanes that run in parallel. Assuming everything is good and happy and working as it should, only one lane will actually be actively operating, the other lanes typically are still passing the signals back and forth, but there signals are being disregarded (but may still be recorded to any data recording devices for later analysis). If however something seems off, maybe a control isn't responding the way it's expected to, or some piece of displayed information seems nonsensical, you can swap to an alternate lane, the idea being that with the lanes being independent of each other apart from their end points, this will overcome any electrical component failures. In more advanced systems you may have 3 or more control lanes, with a computer automatically comparing the data on each lane and deciding which is correct and which is not, on the basis of probability, if 2 lanes carry identical data, and 1 lanes data is different, it's more likely that the lane with data that differs is faulty, than that the 2 lanes that are showing the same data are both faulty in exactly the same way.
I was going to say that the lane change is probably because the system was designed to have a level of redundancy, in other words, a duplex system. This is quite apt given the aerospace link of APT-E to English Electric and Alan Wickens having previously worked in the aerospace sector. It's very common for commercial airliners to have duplex and triplex systems to provide one or two levels of redundancy, e.g. two or three autopilots, so if one system fails, you have one or two backups. The same design principle was read across to APT-E.
@@EuropaSman exactly, I believe in modern day aviation its not just a common practice but a legal mandate for any system deemed safety critical.
See my direct reply to Anthony above. The APT-E had a duplex control system which could be switched manually from one channel to the other. There was also a monitor accelerometer which triggered an automatic lane change if it reached a pre-set level of lateral acceleration.
It always reminds me of a model from Thunderbirds. I’m surprised to see how much rust there is underneath.
Great video -
Cheers Anthony for an informative video.
7m24s. Inches of Mercury/vacuum? Labelled as %g. So probably G-force and not air pressure at all.
So, one driver's seat and everybody else standing up trying to take notes on the fly.
British Leyland gas-turbines. How did they even build them as BL was always on strike in the 70's.
300kmh is 186mph. Done it on a motorcycle.
40 years with the railway and I'm entering data/controls for a southern region signalling simulator on other screens watching this on another screen. Not the 70's.
Around 1983 I got a free ticket to ride a tilting train out of Glasgow (APT) to I think it was Euston. That was weird when stood up - like messed up as guinea pigs for free travel and please fill in a questionaire. Thankfully, tilting has got more controlled since then as you do not notice it and coffee/beer/soup does not slide onto the carpet.
Cheers, I learn every day!
Beeching didn't cut the rail network, Marples did, Beeching could only recommend closures, it was Marples who decided and issued the closure notices.
Marples was a wrong un, he eventually did a midnight flit overseas to escape tax.
He would have fit right in with Johnson and Sunak.
Wow the APT-E looks really cool I always wonder when it entered service and preserved after withdrawn from service I have to say I does represent the ones in the past or the future something like that
Thoroughly enjoyed that ❤
Go on, restore that to running order 😊
Beautiful 👍
Wonderful video! I love to see a video on GWR 4003 Lode Star, if she's in the museum that is.
Brilliant really enjoyed
Presumably the APT-E has more than one hydraulic system for redundancy purposes. I would therefore guess that the Lane Change button switches the bogie's lift pack to the second hydraulic system, to be used either in case of a failure of the first system, or to test the second system.
Lane Change - there were probably dual redundant hydraulic and control systems for the tilt aa it’s safety critical. More of the aerospace heritage.
Very interesting story behind the APT-E, it’s futuristic almost doctor-who esk style would fit right into a Sci-fi film.
That’s not too bad an idea really, a full-length cinematic film about how this train came to be, (and how the APT-P failed)
Seriously who designed this train. It has a face only a mother can love
I like how the locomotives look like wedges of cheese at the front
Speaking of Dr Who, I always thought the front of it looked like K-9.
Ha ha yes, it was bugging me as I couldn't think what it looked like. But yeah K-9
Huh. I've just done my own video on this just last Thursday
@Luke's Locomotives I watched it, it was very good 👍
@@ThatScottishAtlantic57 Thank you!
After 54 years, the Tritium shouldn't be too much to worry about with a half life of 12.3yrs 👍🏻
17:28 You could add two names that destroyed UK’s rail network: Beeching and Thatcher.
Substitute the name of Dr Richard Beeching for Ernest Marples MP and you might be nearer the truth.
Didnt they use Old Dalby for the crash test with a class 46 and the nuclear flask
amazing train👍
It never worked. So shitty train
You don’t show the turbines, or say much about them. Are any of them still installed? What was the power rating of them?
4:21 Isn't that completely wrong? From what I've read, the APT-E has conventional nose-suspended traction motors in the leading bogies, he is pointing at what I believe is the hydrokinetic brake assembly, which is located in the axle. Also, the air intakes are not for "cooling" the gas turbines, they are the main air intakes for combustion air (although the combustion air also works for cooling, so it's not strictly wrong, but it sounds a bit misleading. It's like saying the air intake for a jet engine is the cooling air intake.) And yes, I'm fun at parties.
You are right I saw Mr Tilt as he is known at a model railway show when Rapido were showing their model of the train. He told me they used off the shelf parts were possible to keep costs down and amazed me by saying the traction motors used were class 37 ones. What the curator shows is one of the kinetic brakes which were a hollow tube containing turbine blades surrounding the axle, these were filled with water when applying the brakes. On one test run with the APE P one exploded and caused a derailment, they found the cause was a part being fitted incorrectly.
I'm only human and do forget things!
@@anthonycoulls7301 Of course, thanks for the response! I only realised the brake thing because your video made me read up on the APT-E more than I otherwise would have. And sorry, hope I didn't come across as too much of an anorak, thanks for filming something I would never have seen otherwise!
@@anthonycoulls7301 Of course you are and so do I, I always say the man who never made a mistake never did anything. Great video as are the rest of them.
and look I made a mistake in my reply LOL Reading back I just spotted it
What about the cars with the turbines in
I did see a black 5 from the LMS.
You did, number 5000.
Brill very interesting.
I think the "inches of Mercury" gauge is actually "%g", meaning, I presume, what percentage of G it's pulling (whether that's horizontally or under braking, I'm not sure)
You're quite right. I would've thought that this train would've been air braked rather than vacuum.
I think it's actually percentage grade, as in how steep the track is.
wow and now tilting is a common hsr thing. it even made its way to canadas lrc trainsets but the tilting was disabled in the early 2000s, or at least thats what ive heard
This train got me interested in trains. It's a shame because we had engineering talent but a lack of investment.
The APT-E would of been such a ideal train for the East Coast Main Line, Great Western Main Line, Great Eastern Main Line and other main lines in England. Such a shame that the APT and APT-E never came into passenger service.
Well that happens when you build a product that never worked as it should. GB should have followed the Japanese and the French and build a normal HST with some nice straight tracks. But alas until this very day it takes more then 5 hours to go from London to Edinburgh
APT-E was never intended as a passenger train. The E was for experimental. Unlike Jim's comment, they did eventually get APT-P working and it was introduced on relief services but by then the decision had already been made to can the project.
@@cjmillsnun for how long did the APT run again. Because we all saw the famous clip about the quit, smooth and all together delightful experience. All the while the coffee is walking off the table. The whole APT project was a giant failure and it was the Italians who finally made it work for you.
I travelled on the APT-P as a young person. It ran on the WCML with mostly success for a couple of years
Do you think if they had stuck to Brunels Broad Gauge that trains would have been faster and the ride more stable.But I suppose hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Could you open and close those access steps from within the train?
Reminiscent of the Turbo Train in limited use in Canada and the US, tho the Turbo Train looked rather ungainly and had a passive tilt system, that like the APT was underdeveloped early on and had its issues, tho in time managed to become fairly reliable after much work. Only to be retired in 1982. Like this one the “Turbo” used gas turbines, but I believe they were direct drive to the bogies through the free turbine of the PWC St-6 turbines (4 for propulsion and 1 for power). The Turbo certain wasn’t as pretty as this was though. They also did not preserve an example of these cars which did manage to get up to 170.8 MPh in trials and hold the record for gas turbine vehicles which they could never get to in normal service especially in Canada, due to the amount of crossings. Sadly there hasn’t been much like it since though some of the current diesel can certainly get up there in speed nowadays. It is something they should have continued developing
100mph South African electric trains....? WCML curving via Liverpool...?!
Do any of the turbines still work
No, but we in the Support & Conservation Group have two zero houred turbines stored at York............. :-)
These do turn as well if I remember Kit
@@anthonycoulls7301 Oh yes, we should hook them up to some batteries and a fuel tank one day. 🙂
What was the purpose of the vacuum gauge,surly it had air brakes ?
Where is the APT-P based?
Wherr are the turbines
If only we invested in proper high speed lines in the 70s/80s like France, instead of work around solutions, which even then, were botched and rushed into service, better late than never though
Exactly! The APT is cool, but a new straighter track (or realignment projects) would’ve paid dividends long into the future in ways APT hadn’t.
@@kaitlyn__L Would certainly have helped but the APT could have been a success if it had not been rushed into service and subsequently influenced the Pendolino.
Well, here in the US...oh, well, never mind.
The Japanese built the Shinkansen. The French the TGV and the Brits this wobbly thing that never truly worked. Well done England
I can’t help but think how far behind the uk was design wise with the HST, considering around that time period The Japanese had the Shinkansen and the French had the TGV. Those trains looked miles more sleek and futuristic that the boxy diesel HST
Non ASLEF cab! Only one seat!
It's pitty APT haven't caught on when it was developed, and was replaced by less advanced HST - which of course became a legend of its own, but definitely wasn't that revolutionary, apart from the looks it was pretty much conventional.
Silly question. Having got in how do you get the steps back up, or down?
you can drop the steps via a button that is located above the steps and if you want to back it up, possibly simply back it up manually
@@voidjavelin23 Do you mean the button pointed out in the video that releases the steps? Having got into the APT how do you return the steps to the original position without getting out again?
Why is Wylam Dilly & Puffing Billy's railway history always neglected?, these are the two oldest trains that are still in existence
Great video, but why the gas turbines? Was it seen as the future or was it more about testing the other systems and the gas turbines were the best solution for powering the train?
It was seen as the future. Gas prices were low, power was high (and so was fuel consumption!). By the end of the 70s this was being reconsidered as fuel prices had risen a lot. The USA also had gas turbine trains in the 70s, like the TurboTrain.
It was also to enable the train to run on none electrified lines Derby research centre where the train was kept had no overhead power, also the record breaking line from St Pancras was not electrified. The turbines were extremely loud I only saw the train once moving slowly into Derby station. I am not sure the public would of been happy with turbine powered trains screaming through the countryside day and night unless the production ones were going to be a lot quieter.
The train needed 3500 hp to reach its 155 mph target speed in a reasonable time, and diesels would have been too heavy. Gas turbines were the only answer if the train was going to run anywhere without 25 Kv overhead power. But the 1973 fuel crisis, when fuel prices were multiplied by four overnight, stopped any further development in that direction and thus the APT-Ps were electric only.
@@kitspackman3994 One would think it would have been far simpler to electrify track, especially when large amounts of train were expected to run on it.
@@lars7935 We were doing this in the 1970s, it's taken until now for the current British railway authorities to even think about electrifying the Midland Main Line, and so far they've only got as far as Kettering........
K9’s head inspired by this ?
I don't get it, what is that with the radio active stuff?
its the AWS sunflower indicator, it uses luminous yellow paint instead of lights to saving batteries and suprisingly their radioactive
Concord on rails the best of british
Should I be saddened that Sir Nigel Gresley wasn't mentioned in your name timeline (flying Scotsman 100mph+, Mallard 126mph, sure these weren't sustained by is that due to the track or the loco?)?
Anyone know the name of the station at 16:12?
i didnt know that the apt-e was powered by gas turbines! i bet its the lost sucessor of the gt3
It’s ironic that at the time APT was being developed, France was developing the non-tilting TGV and investing an order of magnitude in new infrastructure between Paris and Lyon. Germany was working on similar projects with the ICE.
Some 50 years later the UK government has wrecked British Rail with privatisation, is whining about the cost of HS2 and cutting it back instead of extending it through the North of England into Scotland.
In the meantime the regional and national business economies of France, Germany, Italy Spain etc. have all benefitted economically from extending their high speed rail networks and leapt ahead of the UK.
So much for the UK government’s “levelling up” and “Global” post Brexit Britain!
How can you trade internationally if you can’t even get your internal transport infrastructure right! 😡
I was born in 1976 in Florida, but the APT-E is part of my family, it’s got my family last name initial in its name: *E.* so the APT-E is a “distant” member of my family.
Amazing video I love watching these. I have a question about the Duchess of Hamilton is the original paint under the streamlining since the streamlining was fitted in 2005
The front of the APT-E always reminds me of a baboon's face.
Yet NRM didn't care about APT P which is rotting outside rn. Whats left of it.
So the sunflower is radioactive? Is that why it's called a SUN flower instead of another kind of flower, or am I overthinking it?
It is just a name drivers gave it because the triangular yellow segments resemble sunflower petals. These glow in the dark so they are visible in tunnels or at night. instead of using a lamp they were painted with luminous yellow paint which is radioactive. They were first used on steam locomotives which used a battery to work the equipment and probably why paint was used instead of a lamp which would drain the battery
@@cedarcam So I was overthinking it! And that also explains why they used that kind of paint, instead of a lamp, thanks!
APT-E tells us a lot more about the history of the rilway system; a history of innovation, technical prowess and of a government that hated railways and progress.
Remember, by the early 1980s APT-P was on the rails and in service, hurried there because of a conservative government that was looking at the price of eveything and the value of nothing. The APT programme was hounded by that government to "produce results" and as a prototype, it wasn't perfect. it was good, it was ground breaking and (as we now know) it was the future but it wasn't good enough for people who wanted profits above all.
So what happened? Cuts, closure and a technology that disappeared, only to reappear a few years later in the Pendolino. Technology that the UK developed, being sold back to the UK at a price.
The lesson? Never trust conservative governments. They cut and underfund everything. Today, we are watching our high speed rail "network" being cut and cut and cut - a network that we should have been building in the 1980s and which we are 20 years late to the party with. The APT went the same way as the British nuclear programme, british satellite launching capapcity and pretty much every other advanced technology we try to develop. "it's too expensive, let's cut it".
As you stand on a platform, waiting for the third Northern rail train in an hour that's been cancelled, remember that this is what cuts do; they undermine things until they don't work. As you stand in the rain on a bus shelter station, waiting for a train that never comes, remember that this is what low taxes mean. failure.
I remember seeing this unloved and rotting away at York. Great that it's being cared for now.
Yet another example of British engineering not taken to proper fruition. Not the nine o'clock news helped with their very funny sketch about the APT in passenger service.
such a shame our govermnet at the time was not so anti train ... so we sold it to the Italians.. then brought it back so sad. If only they would of taken there time , invested , there would not be need for HS2 ... as the country would already a fast railway network .
We still need HS2. The WCML is overcrowded & the problem is the speed differential of the trains which use it. You can take the local trains away because that would bypass the locations they serve.
Should of been kept as a four car. 😢
Hornby 's Version was vastly more successful.
Rapido made the APE-E. Hornby made the APT-P .. twice.