Advanced Passenger Train

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, only to be bested by the service prototype APT-P at 162.2 miles per hour 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 British Rail's struggling 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 massive press coverage and the entire project derided as a white elephant and a further 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 The trains were withdrawn from service again by the end of the month, to the great amusement of the press.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. 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 had collapsed as anyone in authority distanced themselves from what was widely derided as a failure, while the HST found widespread support. All thoughts of building a production version, APT-S, were abandoned, and the three APT-Ps ran for just over a year before being withdrawn again over the winter of 1985/6.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.

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 designs like the British Rail Class 91. More recently, the original tilting system was reintroduced on the WCML with the British Rail Class 221, built by Bombardier Transportation. Its tilting system was originally licensed from the APT. Other features pioneered on APT, such as the hydrokinetic braking used to stop the train within existing separations, have not been adopted.

The Railway Technical Centre
As part of the RTC, Coach: S60750 (QXA RDB975386) was converted from a Hastings DMU to a coach fitted with tilting bogies.