21 years ago

Posted by Steven Bateman on the Ngauge mailing list.

21 years ago today (ie 7th Dec 1981) BR's Advanced Passenger train made its first journey from Glasgow to London - in a record beating time of 4 hours and 14 minutes.

I wonder how long it will be until the Pendolinos do any better? (hopefully without the need for sick bags!)

Was it really that long ago? I remember the APT project getting cancelled because the new business-led sectorisation of BR decided there was no business case for a 4-and-a-half hour journey from London to Glasgow.

The media loved taking the piss out of the APT, perhaps because they put it into passenger service before they'd ironed out all the bugs (Voyagers, anyone?). I believe the decision to scrap it was made just as the engineers managed to get it working properly. Then the media had more fun with pictures of this shiny new train sitting in the scapyard.

The one surviving APT now gathers dust at the railway heritage centre at Crewe, beside the west coast main line it should have worked, a perpetual reminder of what might have been.