About: Class 390 Pendolino   Sponge Permalink

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The history of the willy-shaped train can be traced back to the early 1970s, when British Rail decided it would be a good idea to go very fast between London and various regional cities. Of course, given the cities that were looked at (Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow), the fact that the rail route between them was not built in a straight line should have told them that people really didn't want to get to them particularly quickly. The new train was the Not Quite So Advanced Passenger Train, which was designed to tilt. This had two benefits:

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  • Class 390 Pendolino
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  • The history of the willy-shaped train can be traced back to the early 1970s, when British Rail decided it would be a good idea to go very fast between London and various regional cities. Of course, given the cities that were looked at (Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow), the fact that the rail route between them was not built in a straight line should have told them that people really didn't want to get to them particularly quickly. The new train was the Not Quite So Advanced Passenger Train, which was designed to tilt. This had two benefits:
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abstract
  • The history of the willy-shaped train can be traced back to the early 1970s, when British Rail decided it would be a good idea to go very fast between London and various regional cities. Of course, given the cities that were looked at (Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow), the fact that the rail route between them was not built in a straight line should have told them that people really didn't want to get to them particularly quickly. Nevertheless, British Rail thought "let's give it a go". However, they were constrained by the fact that everyone was pretty much broke during the 1970s, and so couldn't spend lots of money on such things as getting the economy moving. So, unlike the French, who thought to build nice new very straight railways, British Rail's wizard wheeze was a train that tilted, and was powered by gas, collected from all the hot air produced by politicians and trade union leaders. The new train was the Not Quite So Advanced Passenger Train, which was designed to tilt. This had two benefits: * It could negotiate the twisty route faster * It allowed the train driver to feel like a fighter pilot (written into their new Conditions of Service) Amazingly, not enough hot air could be collected from all the politicians and union leaders (even with imports), so it was decided that the NQSAPT would be powered by elastic-trickery. The NQSAPT finally entered service, having gone through a lot of development work (made more difficult by the fact that the workers building it were usually on strike) in 1980, with a test run for members of the press. However, because members of the press tend to usually be drunk, and British Rail didn't provide enough food for the journey from Glasgow to London, most of them got ill and blamed the tilting train (rather than them quaffing too much of BR's free hospitality), so wrote that the great new achievement was rubbish. As a consequence, the NSQAPT lived up to its name, got cancelled, and the technology sold to Italy.
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