Hail All!
Following this topic, can anyone now see why my railway preferance is for Sprinters, HSTs and APTs in that order?
Aye...Many people would not associate railways as being "Heavy", but think of the deep growl that a 159 makes as it takes off...Now don't try and tell me that that doesn't sound truly METAL!
Some channel 5 program in late 2003/early 2004 which was talking about the ultimate trains, included the Acela Express...
Gods only know why that was included in such a programme! The Acela is (For all intents and purposes) a Eurostar trainset without the 3rd rail capability...But thanks to the somewhat idiotic rules laid down by the U.S. Federal Rail Authority, Acela trains carry a lot of excess weight in the form of carriage reinforcement as they have to be able to resist something like 10,000lb of pressure in the event of a crash! Thanks to that ruling, the average Acela is so badly weighed down that even a Pendodildo could overtake it with the handbrake on!
ad:
Incidentally, I seem to recall that the American rail companies were
very interested in the APT when British Rail were developing it, and there was a chance that the APT-S would be exported in the hundreds (If not thousands) to the United States for high-speed services over there. Any idea why this was not done in the end? We all know that the APT flopped over here thanks to the insufficient "intelligence" of many of British Rails shareholders, but if BR had sold the plans and two of the three surplus APT-Ps to the Americans for research and testing purposes, then the APT would have probabally become something of a refreshing breeze for the American rail network!
Farewell...
>> Death <<