[pedromorgan]

For those of you in the london area Kit Spackman will be giving a lecture on the developement of the APT on thursday october the 11th.

It will be interesting to hear the APT story first hand from someone who Worked on the developement team.

Keen house is about 4 minutes walk from kings cross (or as its a lecture on the APT perhaps i should say about 20 minutes walk from Euston)

Peter Morgan

 

[7113]

Sounds interesting - I only ever encountered the APT-E - and that was impressive.

Regards

 

[PaulRhB]

I remember seeing it a few time while travelling up the West Coast to visit the grandparents but never got a trip on it just a hastily snatched photo from my train. I finally got a secondhand Hornby one a few years back which has the black front window surround while my brother still has one from when it was released without the black surround. I still have one of the original publicity booklets too and one for the HST.
Real shame it got killed off before it realised it's potential, never liked the power car in the middle though, daft to split up the passenger capacity like that.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?...17&nseq=753

nice photo site too.

 

[Gordon H]

QUOTE (PaulRhB @ 4 Sep 2007, 04:13) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>I remember seeing it a few time while travelling up the West Coast to visit the grandparents but never got a trip on it just a hastily snatched photo from my train. I finally got a secondhand Hornby one a few years back which has the black front window surround while my brother still has one from when it was released without the black surround. I still have one of the original publicity booklets too and one for the HST.
Real shame it got killed off before it realised it's potential, never liked the power car in the middle though, daft to split up the passenger capacity like that.
I only travelled on it once, from Euston to Preston.
As I understood it, the reason for having the power car in the middle was to avoid having a 25kV feeder cable running the length of the train as would have been the case if the power cars had been at the ends like an HST. The dynamics of pantographs and OHLE at such speeds meant that having a pan at each end was not considered workable because that arrangement caused standing wave effects in the wires.
For whatever reason, the French took a different view and had no qualms about feeding 25kV along the roof of their TGVs!

 

[pedromorgan]

QUOTE (Gordon H)For whatever reason, the French took a different view and had no qualms about feeding 25kV along the roof of their TGVs!

Good point.

I understand that virgin had to really push them to let them do it on the pendo. and even then they were not allowed to feed it the entire length of the train, only between the 2 panto fitted coaches.
Aparently it caused no end of headaches!

Peter

 

[pedromorgan]

A quick bump to remind people that the lecture is this comming thursday.

Peter