The Advanced Passenger Train (APT) was a tilting high speed train developed by British Rail during the 1970s and early 1980s, for use on the West Coast Main Line (WCML). The WCML contained many curves, and the APT pioneered the concept of active tilting to address these, a feature that has since appeared on designs around the world. The experimental APT-E achieved a new British railway speed record on 10 August 1975 when it reached 152.3 miles per hour (245.1 km/h), only to be bested by the service prototype APT-P at 162.2 miles per hour (261.0 km/h) in December 1979, a record that stood for 23 years.
Development of the service prototypes dragged on, and by the late 1970s the design had been under construction for a decade and the trains were still not ready for service. The election of Margaret Thatcher brought matters to a head and she alluded to funding cuts for the project. Facing the possibility of cancellation, BR management decided to put the prototypes into service, with the first runs along the London-Glasgow route taking place in December 1981. The result was a media circus when every problem large or small received front-page coverage and the entire project derided as an example of BR's incompetence. The trains were withdrawn from service again by the end of the month, to the great amusement of the press.
The problems were eventually solved and the trains quietly reintroduced in 1984 with much greater success. By this time the competing High Speed Train, powered by a conventional diesel engine and lacking the APT's tilt and performance, had gone through development and testing at a rapid rate and was now forming the backbone of BR's passenger service. All support for the APT project collapsed as anyone in authority distanced themselves from what was being derided as a failure. Plans for a production version, APT-S, were abandoned, and the three APT-Ps ran for just over a year before being withdrawn again over the winter of 1985/6. Two of the three sets were broken up, and parts of the third sent to the National Railway Museum where it joined the APT-E. The patents for the APT's tilt system were sold to Fiat.
In spite of the APT's troubled history, the design was highly influential and directly inspired other successful trains. The considerable work on electrification that was carried out hand-in-hand with APT was put to good use with newer non-tilting designs like the British Rail Class 91. More recently, the APT's tilt system was returned to the WCML on the British Rail Class 390, based on the Fiat car design and built by Alstom. Other features pioneered on APT, such as the hydrokinetic braking used to stop the train within existing separations, have not been adopted.
British Rail's Class 370 tilting trains, also referred to as APT-P (meaning Advanced Passenger Train Prototype), were the pre-production Advanced Passenger Train units. Unlike the earlier experimental gas-turbine APT-E unit, these units were powered by 25 kV AC overhead electrification and were used on the West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Glasgow Central. The APT-P is the most powerful domestic train to have operated in Britain, the eight traction motors fitted to the two central Motor Cars giving a total output of 8,000 horsepower (6,000 kW). This enabled the train to set the UK rail speed record of 162.2 miles per hour (261.0 km/h) in December 1979, a record that stood for 23 years until an InterCity 225 set reached 162.6 miles per hour (261.7 km/h) in a test run on Stoke Bank.
The APT-P was unveiled to the public on 7 June 1978 and continued to be used for testing into 1986. Due to ongoing technical problems with these pre-production units, and a lack of cash or political will to take the project forward, the planned APT-S (Advanced Passenger Train Squadron Service) production-series units were never built, but did influence the design of the later InterCity 225 sets designed for the East Coast Main Line electrification. The influence is strongest with the Class 91 locos which took many features from the APT powercars. The technology was later sold to Fiat and used for improving their second generation Pendolino trains which have been used worldwide, including the West Coast Main Line as the Class 390.
The train on display consists of six cars, formed into a single train:
48103 - Driving Trailer Second
48404 - Trailer Restaurant Second Buffet
48603 - Trailer Brake First
49002 - Non-Driving Motor
48602 - Trailer Brake First
48106 - Driving Trailer Second
A single Non-Driving Motor car does not form part of the train and is exhibited separately:
49006 - Non-Driving Motor (not part of the above train) was on loan to the Electric Railway Museum in Coventry from July 2011 until its closure in October 2017 and has been moved back to Crewe by March 2018.
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A verification of visit question (an alternate visit option for visitors who choose to visit without providing proof photos): visit the M 48103 Driving Trailer Second (marked "370 003" in the front) driving cab. Find a "MAIN RESERVOIR PIPE" dial. There is a seven digit number (xxxx/xx x) below the text "MAIN RESERVOIR PIPE". Send me the number using the "Send message" functionality on my profile page. DO NOT post a photo of that dial or the answer in your log.