Train of the Week

This week, I'd like to share a short documentary film i found on YouTube about the InterCity APT (there are some link on this Wikipedia page that are definitely very much worth a while to visit), a failed experimental high speed train that, however, did not fail to inspire in engineering design of newer generation passenger rail equipment. The trainset is also known as the APT-P (because she isn't the only experimental APT, see my old post ), or classified as the Class 370 by British Railways. At the time, the InterCity APT was intended to be used on the electrified West Coast Main Line between London Euston and Glasgow Central. By now you must wonder what APT stands for-Advanced Passenger Train. In short, the InterCity APT is an articulated push-pull electric tilting trainset developed by the British Rail Engineering Limited. Non-powered cars on the train share trucks between them, and the cars tilt to a certain degree when the train goes around a curve. The exact amount ...

I’d like to leisurely write about a leisure summer heritage train ride in the historic county of Yorkshire in the Northeast of England. This train, named the Scarborough Spa Express, is currently operated by West Coast Railways , a privately owned charter train company. The Scarborough Spa Express at York The history of the Scarborough Spa Express began in 1981 as a twice weekly summer steam service offered by British Railways, 13 years after the withdrawal of mainline steam operation. The train was discontinued in 1988 by British Rail, operation had been changing hands a few times (including the National Railway Museum in the 2000s), until 2008, when it landed on her current operator. The train is hauled by various steam locomotives. Approaching Scarborough. This train ride begins in the beautiful City of York at her grand Victorian railway station (the Royal York Hotel and National Railway Museum are just steps away from the station) and goes in a loop via Wakefield an...

I think I’m gonna write about the other EMD GT46 this week (if you remember the Aussie GT46C from a few weeks ago). As always, a handsome EMD Before I go on, I guess I’m gonna revise here the usual naming convention (at least the part that I’m aware of) used by EMD. I may as well talk about, in a run on sentence, a brief history of where EMD comes from and has become. Began as the Electro Motive Corporation in the 1920s, soon EMC was purchased by General Motors and became the Electro Motive Division in America and General Motors Diesel Division in Ontario, it then was spun off as Electro Motive Diesel Inc. in 2005, and was finally purchased wholly by Caterpillar’s Progress Rail Services Corporation. For modern locomotives model numbers, initials GP means 4 axle general purpose, SD means 6 axle special duty, GT means export. So, by that last statement in the last paragraph, obviously the GT46 is an export locomotive. She’s a 6-axle locomotive equipped with 16 cylinder 710 ...

I haven't talked about a named passenger train for a while. Let me write about one this week then. Most people (well, I hope?) know of the famous Canadian, VIA's rebranded version of the Canadian National Railways Super Continental that has derived her name and taken on the stainless steel equipment from the ex Canadian Pacific Railway flagship The Canadian . This fairly lazy post briefly talks about perhaps the first traces of the named transcontinental service. An image under the Creative Commons License from the McCord Museum of Montreal Prior to debut of The Canadian in 1955, The Dominion carried train number 1 and 2 on the CPR. This train I'm writing about today however, predates the Dominion. She existed until the debut of the Dominion in 1933. Okay enough of that crap to make up for word count. This train is called the Imperial Limited. Quite an impressive name really. The Imperial Limited was introduced in 1899 as a seasonal luxury supplement to the then...

I yanked my pictures from older posts. The more I looked at them the more irritatingly unrefined they looked so I decided to buy Lightroom and polish a few up properly. I will be sharing the ones I find adequately sightly to look at in future lazy posts. Out.

Update : I completely forgot about this crazy video on YouTube! Although the GT46C-ACe only weighs 150 tons it's still a hell of a drop from the crane. This week's topic, an Australian locomotive called GT46C using EMD technology and components should not be confused with another EMD export, the GT46 for India. The Aussie GT46 is in fact designed and built by a firm called Downer Rail , a company came from the merger of the familiar Clyde Engineering , an overseas General Motors locomotive builder, and another Australian rail equipment engineering company called Walker. Major components of the GT46C mirror those of the popular SD70 roaming the North American railroad network (so yes, they have 16-710 engines!). The trucks on the GT46C though look to be of a different and perhaps more locally flavored design, instead of the HTC-R we come to know well on this end of the world. Unlike the SD70 though (since these are built for the former National Rail system in A...