In 1979 when my younger brother Ron was in high school he befriended a British student Stu whose father was an executive with a US company here in the states. Stu’s family kept their English home as the job in the US was temporary and they invited my brother to stay with them in England for a summer. He was happy to go.
While there he told me of a train ride he took with Stu and his dad from Reading (near their house) to London. Ron said the train was diesel powered and called the InterCity 125 and said it went 125mph!
I was completely unaware that indeed Britain did have 125mph diesels. And did it routinely. I told him it must have been kilometers per hour. No diesel went that fast. He assured me I was wrong, everything in the UK was still in mph but I was dubious. Maybe he’d been to too many pubs.
Yet sure enough a few months later came my Trains magazine with a speed log of the 125. And yes it went 125! And I apologized to my brother. Here it is.
While indeed the trade press referred to them as HSTs, British Rail presented them as Inter-City 125s to the public. Can you imagine Amtrak showing the speed of their trains right in the timetable? Or for that matter right on the side of the train?
It was really genius. Everyone knew just how fast they were going to go. They wanted to ride them just for the thrill of it. Very few cars at the time could even think of going 125.
For North Brit and others interested I also present the first up (to London) trip on an HST (as Nock and most in the rail industry press called them). He was also on the first down (to Edinburgh) run but there was so much track work there was no 125mph speeds. Even on a clear up run there was not a lot of 125 as opposed to nearly continuous 125 in my original post.
The original post was on the GWR mainline to Bristol Wales and the west. That line was originally layed out as broad gauge 7’ 1/4" in the 1830s but converted to standard gauge in the 1890s. Brunel was the civil engineer and layed it out for such speeds from the get go (although certainly no more than about 75mph in the 1800s, but he was thinking ahead!). Minimum curves were 2 miles radius!
On the other hand this run was on the East Coast Main Line which was not quite layed out for such continuous speeds although since 1978 more curves have been realigned or bypassed.
When I was a lad and upto 1980 train watching/spotting was a pasttime for boys. The ‘Powers that Be’ put a stop to such activity. They also did away with ‘named trains’ as best they could.
Seeing the ‘Thames Clyde’, ‘Thames Forth’ or ‘North Briton’ etc. etc.. brought pride to the railways. Putting non-railway people in charge was a really bad move imo.
Even now the people in charge are not railway people. Residents in Washington (U.K.) are asking for the Metro to be extended from Heworth to Washington on old trackbed that is still there from many years ago. They have been asking for the line to be rebuilt since 1980. Powers that be say the line could be built in 2035? That depends who is in power then.
Chessie System in the days before the merger with Seaboard System to ultimately form CSX Transportation use NAMEs for most of their Scheduled Manifest Freight trains - New Yorker, Chicagoan, Detroiter, Baltimorean, Northeasterner, Southwesterner and many many more. It was said at the time that the Salesmen in the Marketing Department had a easier time sell Names to customers than they did in selling numbers.
When CSXT got formed, all trains became three digit numbers with a lettered prefix and a two digit suffix of the train’s day of the month of origin. The lettered prefix indicated various categories of service and priority of the train numbers that followed. Initially most through manifest trains had the letter ‘R’ as their prefix, when the ‘Quality’ program was initiated the R was changed to Q to indicate ‘Quality’. That system which started in 1987 when CSXT became an operational entity was changed in about 2023 - to similar but different meanings for the prefix letter.
Children and adults used to be on platforms and collect train numbers as trains arrived; logging them in books. around 1980 Railway Staff began ‘moving on’ the children/adults. The continuous ‘hounding’ made it impossible to collect the train numbers in stations.
Yes you could stand at the trackside, but could be there hours and see two or three trains. By stopping people collecting train numbers in stations the hobby died.
Stopping the people caused British Rail loss in revenue of the sale of platform tickets the people had to buy to get on the platforms. Another loss of revenue to BR was some of the people would buy teas, coffees, sandwiches etc. from the cafeterias.
It still is! British and Japanese take more pictures of trains than anywhere else I travel although more so in Japan and less in UK. You still see trainspotters there whereas rarely see them elsewhere.
JL_Chicago, I took the 125 from London to Bristol to Bath and back. That day there was trackwork being done at Swindon so that’s why the train traveled that route. Such a wonderful trip. Always have wished that somewhere in the US it could be replicated. No such luck.
The problem was (and to an extent still is) the 850k buff and draft requirement Waivers were hard to come by (and likely inadvisable when, not if, there was a fatal accident involving collision). If you wonder why Acela was so porky and ultimately so slow…
The Europeans made great strides in ‘collision energy management’ (CEM) of lightweight rail structures, but of course there were times, as at Escheide, that all the compressive foam and strategic struts couldn’t make up for virtual tinfoil and molded-foam aircraft-style construction. It is probably difficult for American policymakers to vote for “unsafe” rail equipment without changing the ‘narrative’ (or trying to fob off risk onto foreign manufacturers) – but that may just be me being cynical.
I haven’t entirely ruled out that the Mexicans may dance their HSTs up to interesting speeds at some point. They’ll certainly sound good whatever they do!
Eschede had the highway above collapse onto the train. How many tons is a concrete highway bridge? American trains would not have held up better. The 800k# buff standard is compressive longitudinally. Are there any vertical buff standards? I’m not aware of any but they may be.
The train was torn apart in the collision before the bridge collapsed on it.
It does have to be said that the American buff/draft-compliant structure might not have survived the kind of stresses produced in the Eschede accident, which was out of the plane of any real CEM in that design. I considered the damage to that Amfleet shell in the Cayce wreck to be an interesting demonstration of that. I am also mindful of how the car in the Frankfort Junction/188 wreck came apart on the cat pole.
I believe the Avelia Liberty sets were bought under a waiver, but I have not seen the relevant text.
The standards have been revised since the first Acela.
“Key aspects of Acela Avelia’s crash standards and compliance:
FRA Tier III Standards: The Avelia Liberty trains are designed to comply with the FRA’s Tier III standards for high-speed passenger equipment, which allow for operation at speeds up to 220 mph on dedicated tracks.
**Adaptation to North American standards:**The Avelia Liberty is part of the Avelia family of high-speed trains, but it has been specifically adapted to conform with North American railroad standards, including FRA crashworthiness requirements.
**Crash Energy Management (CEM) system:**The power cars of the Avelia Liberty trainsets include a CEM system, designed to help meet FRA Tier III standards while reducing train weight. This system helps ensure the preservation of occupied space for passengers and crew members in the event of a collision.
**Crashworthiness and Occupant Protection:**FRA Tier III standards include crashworthiness and occupant protection performance requirements, and the Avelia Liberty trains are equipped with a collision protection system. These requirements aim to limit deceleration to a safe level during a collision and minimize injuries.
Meeting challenging requirements: The legacy Acela trainsets were designed to satisfy strict government requirements, including the ability to withstand a collision with a freight train at speed without collapsing. This necessitated specific design features, such as enhanced longitudinal compressive strength and a structural cage around the operator’s cab. The Avelia Liberty, as the replacement for the first-generation Acela, also needs to meet similarly demanding safety standards.”
I don’t think American wagons would have fared any better.
FRA has initiated a number of studies that have shown that the probability of survival in a typical rail accident in a railcar with CEM elements is significantly better than a railcar designed to S-580. Eschede was atypical.
In our cars, we have long been accustomed to the CEM element in the form of a crumple zone. nobody would think of building a car so rigidly that it would absorb the forces of an accident without deforming.
The European crashworthiness regulations require that a part of the crash energy is absorbed by CEM element, the remaining and resulting forces have to be absorbed by the wagon structure. So we have a buff force too but is less than half.
When Acela 1 was built the FRA Tier III standard wasn’t in force yet. That happened 2018 or 2019. Acela 1 was designed according to AAR standard S-580 I think.
Regards, Volker
