Tilting Trains

When a cyclist goes round a bend he leans over to the inside of the curve, to counteract the camber and to maintain balance. When a train goes round a curve it, too, leans, following the tracks which are cambered to keep the train's centre of gravity balanced. But this causes passengers to be "squeezed" by centrifugal force, causing some discomfort. It was realised, as early as the 1930s, that a train that could tilt going round curves, could travel faster and also give a better ride for passengers. The idea of the tilting train was born. But to counteract the curve the body of the train needs to tilt the opposite way, keeping it upright at all times. A pendulum system was tried, in the late 1930s in the USA, and in Spain during the 1960s.

The first tilting train to come into service was in 1969 in Canada with the Turbotrain (also the world's first gas turbine powered train in commercial service), operating between Quebec City, Montreal and Toronto. Our photo shows a superb model made by Canadian Model Trains Inc.. Italy followed in 1975 with its Pendolino services. Spain followed with its Talgo Pendular trains in 1988.

The Pendolino train (taken from the Italian word for "pendulum") was first introduced and tested in Italy. The mechanism, as developed today,allows the trains to tilt when going round a bend. The maximum tilt of 8° allows the trains to reach a speed 35% higher than for conventional trains, whilst assuring the greatest safety and comfort for passengers. Railways around the world by the 1960s, impressed by the success of the Japanese Shinkansen project and the French TGV, wanted to have their own high speed trains, but without the cost of building dedicated high speed lines. Various ideas were tested, including one which had tilting seats that adjusted as the train cornered. But this idea was rejected and the first true tilting trains were introduced in 1975, built by Fiat and used on some Rome-Rimini services on an experimental basis. The train was a four-car fixed emu (pictured left).

A little after this the British tried the same idea with the APT (Advanced Passenger Train). Developed at the British Rail Derby Research Division, the idea was that the APT could be used on those lines that were not as straight as those being built by the French and Japanese. The West Coast Main Line was the chosen route, linking London and Glasgow. Because that route has many curves, traditional trains could only run at about 100 mph. BR wanted a train that could reach 150 mph. Yet there were enormous problems and the project was rushed into service before it was ready and fully tested.

In 1972 the gas-turbine powered APT-E was born and went through a lengthy gestation period before being finally put into service in December 1981 only to be withdrawn from service four days later in a blaze of bad publicity. Despite an attempt to put them back into service the following summer the project was doomed to failure, with too much interference from politicians and managers who tried to force the engineers to rush the project. It was a failure.

Back in Italy Fiat continued their development work and in 1989 introduced the first regular service with a Pendolino train (ETR 450), comprising nine coaches. It was introduced on the Rome-Milan high speed line, making the journey in under four hours (compared to seven previously). Further developments continued over the following years up to the most recent the ETR 610, now built by Alstom (which bought Fiat) and compatible with the signalling systems of both Germany and Switzerland, allowing through running. Pendolino trains are running successfully at high speed on most Italian main lines.

Other countries, too, wanted to use similar trains an several have bought or leased the technology, including Finland, which needed a tilting train specially adapted to its cold climates. This caused some reliability problems, but recently this appears to have been solved and tilting trains are planned to be in use on a new Helsinki-St Petersburg service (in cooperation with Russian Railways) to begin in 2010.

Portugal has its high speed tilting trains, running on the main line between Porto, Lisbon and Faro in the Algarve. To accommodate Portugal's broad gauge track, the bogies had to be redesigned and the trains were assembled in Portugal. They run at around 220 km/h (137 mph).

Back in the UK, Virgin Trains (on its West Coast services between London, Manchester and Glasgow, introduced tilting trains in 2004 and they have been running successfully ever since. The trains were built by Alstom in the UK (though the assembly plant at Birmingham has now been closed). Eastern Europe has tilting trains running in Slovenia on its main line from Ljubljana to Celje and Maribor, the return train extending past Ljubljana once a day to Venice. The Czech Republic also introduced a Pendolino service in 2004 but it has been beset by problems connected with signalling and air conditioning, together with tilting mechanism failures (similar to those experienced by Britain's APT). Most of the problems appear to have been solved and the train is now running regularly between Prague and Ostrava, Bratislava and Vienna. In the United States the Acela Express is also a tilting train but we have dealt with this in the Other High Speed Trains section.