British Rail's Flying Saucer 155
Dynamoo writes "The Register is carrying a story about a patent for a fusion powered spacecraft filed by British Rail in the 1970s. While the concept may seem silly for a public railway, it seems that the British Rail Research Division employed a large number of aircraft engineers who presumably had some spare time between projects such as the Advanced Passenger Train."
Power Source (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that sustainable fusion hasto this day eluded scientists was no deterrent to such a ferociously inventive mind. Frederick explains how to dodge the scientific watershed: "The thermonuclear fusion will take place in a series of pulses, each pulse being triggered by laser energy, and/or energetic particles reflected from a previous pulse. The system will be arranged so that the fusion process will decay after each pulse so that the stability of the system is maintained."
And according to a related report, the fusion required to run the thing may not be ready anytime soon [theregister.co.uk]
Re:British Rail (Score:2, Informative)
My parents tell me that BR were normally pretty punctual, even if the trains weren't so great to look at.
Re:They will have had lots of spare time... (Score:3, Informative)
The 125 was actually a simultaneous project which got into service before the APT was abandoned.
Re:They will have had lots of spare time... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Anorak Alert! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Other patents... (Score:5, Informative)
You mean Flo control [quantumpicture.com] is patented? (See picture on page 2, ie. click next)
Re:This solves nothing. (Score:2, Informative)
It's worse in the South because there are two electrification systems in use; the old Southern Electric, third-rail DC system and the modern, overhead AC system. Not all vehicles are dual-powered, and neither are all tracks, so re-platforming options are limited. Of course, since {as every Londoner knows} there is no electricity in the North of England, this will not be a problem in Leeds
Re:British Rail (Score:3, Informative)
The railways were privatised in the early 90s, leading to vast increases in fares, delays and cancellations. Inexperienced managers were brought in to replace the old BR staff and they wasted alarming amounts of money buying crap. Railtrack gave up on track maintainence until several fatel accidents. They then went to parliment begging for money to do what they were supposed to have done anyway. Rather then closing one lane at a time they used 'blockades' in which whole sections of track are closed at once, leading to mass cancellations and severe inconvienience for passengers.
Oh yes, and tax-payer subsides have more than doubled since privatisation. The private companies can't even sort out the signalling at Waterloo, let alone think about UFOs.
Sounds familiar (Score:2, Informative)
There are other possible earlier ones as well.
Re:They will have had lots of spare time... (Score:4, Informative)
The APT-E was the experimental gas turbine powered test train built in 1973/4. At the same time the prototype HST (Intercity 125 as it became) with the prototype (253001) running by 1975, the production versions (class 253 (great western) and the slightly more powerful class 254 (east coast mainline) going into service in 1977 as a stop-gap as the APT would take a while to come into production.
The HST vehicles (and the Mark 3 coaches) used technology developed in the APT project, such as high speed bogies, wheel design and brakes, the designs for which were licensed throughout the world.
In 1979/80 the APT-P vehicles were produced. These were the prototype technology test/demonstration machines and were electricly powered.
Due to the new Conservative government wanting to see a return on the money already spent on the APT project (which was in total less than 1Km of french TGV track) a political decision was made to force the prototypes into regular service before they were ready.
The inaugural journey was a comedy of errors. Firstly, it was known that the tilt system was not fully debugged and test had shown that some people became "air sick." So, the PR office plied a load of Fleet Street journalists with alcohol, piled them onto the train along with some minor celebrities and then gave them more drink.
Strangely enough the journos go sick and wrote about it. One car had a tilt failure half way through the journey and properly rotated upright and locked itself there. Strangely, the guard on the train agreed to a certain minor celebrity to stop the train at Carlisle to get off. Because of this the train lost its high-speed slot on the track and arrived late, which pleased the journos even more.. Fleet Street loves stamping on anything new and painting it in the blackest terms.
So, a PR disaster.
After being withdrawn from front-line service (for which the protoypes were never designed) they were used on and off on the West Coast Mainline until 1985, by which time all the bugs had been sorted out, they were reliable and it had been determined that the reason for the "air sickness" was due to the tilting being too good and not giving the brain enough hints that the person was going around the corner.
One set of the APT-Ps has been bought by a private buyer and the last I heard was sitting at Crewe.
The Pendolino trains are actually a decendant of a separate tilting train projetc in Italy, which initially used passive tilting. The technology and information gathered during the APT project was used by the italians after the APT project closed.
It is an interesting point that the West Coast Mainline had been given the green light for 155mph running for the APT in the early 80's using the existing lines and signalling. Yet in the late 90's it was stated by the railway authority that the new pendolino trains could only run on that line at 125mph until new signalling was designed, built and installed.
Re:British Rail (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is this. Wet leaves can accumulate during heavy leaf falls. When a train rolls over these, it turns the leaves into an incredibly good lubricant. The moment the driver applies the brakes, hundreds of wheels all lock up. This leaf lube isn't all that good though - quickly wearing off, and when it does, metal to metal contact with the rail head is restored. Except now the wheels are stopped even though the train is still going. The friction burns a flat spot in the wheel - and the rolling stock has to be immediately taken out of service to have the wheel repaired.
BR (or more accurately, Network SouthEast) made a similar gaffe when they told the truth about the snow (the infamous 'wrong kind of snow'). British snow is typically heavy and wet. This snow was like the finest powder in Utah which people love to ski on. It got sucked into traction motors, shorting them out. If they had just lied and said the track was blocked by snow, everyone would have forgotten about it by now.
Clouting Tilt Trains, and Sea-Sickness (Score:3, Informative)
As for causing sea-sickness, this depends on the tilting algorithm. When the APT came out little was known about passenger response and the APT was given a very simple algorithm that aimed for zero lateral g in the passenger saloon. Later knowledge, particularly aquired by FIAT with their Penulino development, made great improvements such as leaving a proportion of the centrifugal force uncorrected by tilt, and also better handling of the transitions. Given any programmable tilt control system (such as the APT had) such tuning could have been applied retrospectively.
As it was, the APT on its first publicity run made a bunch of press hack vomit their whisky-and-soda, leading to the bad press that caused the myth that the APT was some kind of total disaster, a myth that Mrs Thatcher seized upon as an excuse to can the project, and a myth which quite a few Slashdotters seem to have bought too.
Re:British Rail (Score:3, Informative)