For those of you that are fans of these BR mainstays there is a nice item by (the usually very sarcastic) Roger Ford in the October Modern Railways (my local Barns and Nobel carries it). It summarizes the performance and reliability of these now 40 year old train sets. It looks like some of them may have another decade of useful service (in a shortened configuration increasing their performance).
I guess they became "high-speed rail" in Britain when the Advanced Passenger Train (APT) project "ran off the rails" as it were.
I always thought the U.S. could do well to aspire to something along the lines of the HST instead of going to 200 MPH+ trains in one big leap.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
BuslistIt looks like some of them may have another decade of useful service (in a shortened configuration increasing their performance).
Very good! The things these sets are doing daily is amazing considering their age. Very well designed machines.
Had the opportunity to ride the HST in the late '70s from London to Bristol to Bath to London. My first "fast" train ride. Loved it.
That is exactly what the Brightline/AAF concept is, namely an American take on the HST/XPT concept.
K4s_PRRMaybe we should send rail executives, government department heads and members of congress to the UK to learn about how to approach high speed rail.
Of course 2 problems with that. First most of the folks involved in the development of this train set are long departed (and remember it was developed by folks at BERL in response to the failure of the British Rail Research's XPT). Secondly the government of the time was supportive.
Buslist K4s_PRR Maybe we should send rail executives, government department heads and members of congress to the UK to learn about how to approach high speed rail. Of course 2 problems with that. First most of the folks involved in the development of this train set are long departed (and remember it was developed by folks at BERL in response to the failure of the British Rail Research's XPT). Secondly the government of the time was supportive.
K4s_PRR Maybe we should send rail executives, government department heads and members of congress to the UK to learn about how to approach high speed rail.
So send them to see how DB has used a combination of incrementalism and dedicated HSR stretches to develop a pretty decent network.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
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