APT at Manchester Piccadilly?

[Manchester77]

Just a quick question, but as the APT was planned to run all WCML services I assume it would have done Euston - Piccadilly. If so during testing did an APT ever visit Piccadilly for clearance or anything or did they focus their use on Euston a Glasgow which I think they did?

 

[pablo]

I recall in the eighties it was mainly up and down the northern half of the WCML, turning at Preston. The southern half must have had a capacity problem, even then!

 

[Wyvern]

One of the big problems, especially with APT-E, was they could rarely get a path to run at speed.

 

[Yew]

I recall in the eighties it was mainly up and down the northern half of the WCML, turning at Preston. The southern half must have had a capacity problem, even then!

I imagine it was mainly because the northern end is the twisty bit, where the tilt could be fine tuned.

 

[Polarbear]

I seem to recall seeing a photo of an APT-P set at Manchester Piccadilly, but I never saw any there myself in the late 70's/early 80's. It may have been an overnight clearance test?

It begs the question did one ever get to Liverpool Lime St as well?

As mentioned above, most of the testing (especially in the 1980's) was on the northern part of the WCML between Crewe, Preston & Glasgow.

 

[Buttsy]

I almost cabbed an APT one day at Bletchley on a spotting day around 1983/84. It pulled into platform 3 (now 1) and headed back southbound about 10 mins later

 

[pablo]

I imagine it was mainly because the northern end is the twisty bit, where the tilt could be fine tuned.

Well, actually, I do recall a foul-up one day when the tilt wasn't enough and a minor collision occured with passing traffic, or was it some infrastucture? somewhere north of Oxenholme, about mid 80s.

 

[edwin_m]

Are you thinking of the derailment due to, I think, disintegration of the hydrokinetic brake.

 

[pablo]

No. read my words. A photo was published showing an APT stopped (upright) on a particulalry curvey bit and the caption said it had hit summat..... QED?

 

[Cherry_Picker]

I seem to recall seeing a photo of an APT-P set at Manchester Piccadilly, but I never saw any there myself in the late 70's/early 80's. It may have been an overnight clearance test?

It begs the question did one ever get to Liverpool Lime St as well?

I would presume it did, or we would have had ten threads from Scousers complaining bitterly about how Liverpool is every bit as important a city as Manchester and therefore it should have the same level of overnight clearance test trains.

 

[Roverman]

No. read my words. A photo was published showing an APT stopped (upright) on a particulalry curvey bit and the caption said it had hit summat..... QED?

this?

 

[Manchester77]

Isn't that the APT-E?

 

[Eng274]

Is it not the case that the APT frequently never made it past Preston due to equipment failures, and having to go back up to Glasgow to be fixed? I remember seeing an amazing video on YouTube of a documentary following the testing of the APT where one such incident happened.

 

[Manchester77]

It's a pity because had the APT been given another 6 weeks wasn't it said that we would have had the APT in general service as planned?

 

[Bevan Price]

I recall in the eighties it was mainly up and down the northern half of the WCML, turning at Preston. The southern half must have had a capacity problem, even then!

APT-E did run some passenger services between Glasgow & Euston - usually as a relief train calling only at Preston. Not knowing then taht they would have very short lives, I turned down my only opportunity to have a ride from Preston because the arrival time in London would have made it difficult to get home the same night.

 

[Manchester77]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/74009/sets/72157624224189485/detail/

Indeed this set has a few images of the trains first public service run : D

 

[sprinterguy]

Is it not the case that the APT frequently never made it past Preston due to equipment failures, and having to go back up to Glasgow to be fixed? I remember seeing an amazing video on YouTube of a documentary following the testing of the APT where one such incident happened.

That is not the case overall: As Bevan Price says, from 1984 onwards the APT-P (Not the APT-E, which was the gas turbine powered test unit which never carried fare paying passengers) performed a regular Monday to Friday relief turn over the full length of the WCML: Early publicised problems with the hydrokinetic brakes and tilt system have served to mar the (more successful) remainder of the career of these trains.
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It begs the question did one ever get to Liverpool Lime St as well?

In 1980 an APT-P set did appear at Rainhill, hauled by a class 56, as part of the "Rainhill 150" event, though I don't think that it made it as far as Liverpool Lime Street.

 

[rebmcr]

I do recall a foul-up one day when the tilt wasn't enough and a minor collision occured with passing traffic, or was it some infrastucture? somewhere north of Oxenholme, about mid 80s.

A photo was published showing an APT stopped (upright) on a particulalry curvey bit and the caption said it had hit summat.....

How on earth do you imagine it would be out-of-gauge whilst upright? 86s were all going through the same curves upright, and they had wider roofs on both sides!

 

[ainsworth74]

It's a pity because had the APT been given another 6 weeks wasn't it said that we would have had the APT in general service as planned?

I don't believe that to be the case, whilst the project was probably moving in the right direction I think it was still considerably more than six weeks away from being approved for squadron service!

 

[Train wasp]

APT-E did run some passenger services between Glasgow & Euston - usually as a relief train calling only at Preston. Not knowing then taht they would have very short lives, I turned down my only opportunity to have a ride from Preston because the arrival time in London would have made it difficult to get home the same night.

From memory if you wanted to travel on this relief working you needed to buy a ticket in advance of traveling and you were given a boarding card with a seat number allocated to the boarding card.

 

[theageofthetra]

Still looks a smart and modern design over 30 years later. Whos brilliant idea was it to run the first passenger and press junket services in the middle of the very cold winter of 81?

 

[pablo]

Questions answered here http://www.apt-p.com/BenGoodwinDissertation.pdf pps 9 &10
you have to be able to understand what he's saying though.
and here http://www.apt-p.com/aptindex.htm

"On another test run, certain units stuck tilted for parts of the journey. On 7th December 1981, the ATP-P made its first run as a passenger service, from Glasgow Central to Euston. This was successful: however, to play safe BR ran a scheduled service from Glasgow 15 minutes later. This decision soon proved wise, as some APT-P cars suffered tilt failure on the return journey, a problem widely publicised in the media."
photographed and published in a Lakeland newspaper at the time.