What would BR have built?

[Geezertronic]

They have only just standardised on the mobile phone data/charger connection being a micro USB connector so I guess even technology isn't that far ahead

 

[jon0844]

I get what you're saying but that's the connector at one end - you still have a mains plug or USB socket at the other - so you could easily have an adapter. The point would be that everything would communicate with everything else. No differing protocols and incompatible equipment - although you might need the odd adapter here and there.

And on computers, while you may have different shaped ports - you do have standards like USB, serial, parallel, SCSI, ATA or whatever. Most of these are backwardly compatible with earlier versions.

Of course, one day you may have the problem where you have to move on and start new. If you planned well enough, you could ensure that when the Mk1's go, the Mk2's will work with Mk3's. When the Mk4's go, they will work with the Mk3's but not the Mk2's now being phased out - and so on. Obviously this means much tighter planning.

We're allowed to go a little bit crazy here aren't we? I mean, it's not going to happen!

 

[Broken Viking]

Would we have seen a Pendo type train? Who knows, IC250 wasn't designed to tilt.

With appropriate funding, the IC225 would have been fitted with tilt- remember, it WAS designed for it- so the IC250 would perhaps have been deployed to the East with the 225 cascaded to the Birmingham and Glasgow routes.

Just my two bits worth: The IC-225 (And undoutably the IC-250) both would've borrowed as much from the APT project as they could get away without the public spotting the link to the technology from the "failed" class.

I'm not nearly as well-up on my IC-250, but tilting suspension was something that BR had been wanting to implement for years, given how it's use along with higher speed running would slash journey times on both the WCML and ECML. 8)

Don't forget also that the IC-225 was only named that because of the public backlash against the APT project, which came only after BR were unfortunate enough to get a load of ****s on board during the APT's press run. Had it not been for the APT's public failure, we'd all be referring to the IC-225's as the APT-U - It's original BR project name.

To finish off: Don't forget that the IC-225 is basically a modified APT-S; Just with the power-car relocated and the tilting suspension omitted

 

[SouthEastern-465]

Owning a Network SouthEast Book from 1991 and what BR was going to improve all I can say is that the SE would be dominated by "Networkers" and the CEPs were going to be withdrawn in 1993-1994 and funny enough lasted into 2004.

There was going to be Class 471 "Kent Coast Networkers" (To me similar to the early Class 375 design) and if Crossrail would have gone ahead in the 1990s that would of been operated by Class 371s "Networkers" it just goes on and on.....