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British Rail's Flying Saucer

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the to-manchester-and-beyond dept.

Dynamoo writes "The Register is carrying a story about a patent for a fusion powered spacecraft filed by British Rail in the 1970s. While the concept may seem silly for a public railway, it seems that the British Rail Research Division employed a large number of aircraft engineers who presumably had some spare time between projects such as the Advanced Passenger Train."

10 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. British Rail by pubjames · · Score: 5, Interesting


    Is this the same British Rail that can't even keep a train running on time? What chance have they got with a flying saucer?

    "British Rail would like to announce that the 17.34 UFO to Mars has been delayed due to a slight wind and a few leaves blowing in the air..."

    1. Re:British Rail by xfletch · · Score: 2, Interesting
      In case you don't understand that reference to the the Advanced passenger train it was British Rails "leaning train" . The train-spotters' answer to Concorde, but was a catastrophic failure. Leaning over to take corners at speed is cool unless it throws everyones coffee into the isle. The story is in the BBC archive

      , and you can see pictures here You used to be able to see one rotting in the sidings at Crewe railway station. Does anyone know if it it still there?

    2. Re:British Rail by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Leaning over to take corners at speed is cool unless it throws everyones coffee into the isle

      It didn't do that. The ride was very smooth (when the tilt mechanism worked). Too smooth actually. People got motion sickness from going round a corner without feeling like they were going round a corner.

      You used to be able to see one rotting in the sidings at Crewe railway station.

      It was still there last August.

      Some of the technology made it to other trains. Sadly, not the tilting mechanism .

    3. Re:British Rail by Bazzalisk · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Actualy ...

      The tilting system worked fine, and didn't throw people's coffee around - it was practicly every other experimental system on the train that failed. Virgin trains are now running a tilting train service between London and Birmingham ... which makes me seasick, but everybody else seems to be happy with it.

      --
      James P. Barrett
    4. Re:British Rail by AlecC · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Leaning over to take corners at speed is cool unless it throws everyones coffee into the isle.

      On the contrary, tilting over stops the passengers coffeee spilling. Like leaning into the corner on a motorcycle or banking a plane - if you get it right, everything feels perfectly normal to those inside.

      The problems come if you fail to tilt when you should - then everybody's coffee does get thrown around, and you have to slow down to non-tilt speed, making you very late. Or more dangerously, if you fail to untilt or tilt when you shouldn't, becasue then you could be tilting into the other guys track just as he comes towards you tilting into your space. It really has to be very, very reliable - and it wasn't.

      --
      Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
    5. Re:British Rail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
      which makes me seasick, but everybody else seems to be happy with it.
      The trick is not to look out of the windows, especially on bends. The motion sickness is caused by perceiving bends without physically experiencing them.
  2. Daedalus by Phanatic1a · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "The thermonuclear fusion will take place in a series of pulses, each pulse being triggered by laser energy, and/or energetic particles reflected from a previous pulse. The system will be arranged so that the fusion process will decay after each pulse so that the stability of the system is maintained."

    Pulsed inertial confinement fusion is just a fancy version of Orion, and is what the British Interplanetary Society used in their Daedalus spacecraft concept. Given the 1973 date, the same year as the start of Project Daedalus, I imagine the 'inventor' was a member of the Society.

  3. Re:Other patents... by PFI_Optix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's more interesting is a system I saw years ago that was supposed to recognize whether a cat was carrying something in its mouth (like a mouse) by looking at its profile. No more "presents" left for you to step on when you get out of bed in the morning.

    --
    120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
  4. They will have had lots of spare time... by jjeffrey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ....BR canned the Advanced Passenger Train project because apparently the test subjects didn't like the tilting inherent in a tilting train design.

    They came up with the InterCity 125 (because it could do 125MPH) instead. This didn't tilt and was far less revolutionary, but is none the less still in service on our express lines, especially where the line hasn't been electrified.

    It was at least the first train in the UK to have a DVT allowing it to be operated in either direction without being turned round and driven from either end

    Annoyingly, the rights to the APT design were sold to an Italian firm (I think it was Bombardier) who turned it in to the commercialy succesful pendolino - which we have had to buy lots of to run on our West Coast Main line.

    Shame we didn't finish the job ourselves really.

    If you would like to find out more about the APT, visit the National Railway Museum in York UK!

  5. Sobering experience. by Thedeviluno · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I used to laugh at UFO freaks....Until I actually saw one during a BBQ several years ago, with a small gathering of friends late one night outside my house. What we witnessed was a disc visible only by the absence of light in an eliptical shape. The perimeter of the disc had pin-holes of bright white light and I can only guess at the size due to the lack of landmarks in the sky, but the collective opinion seems to be somewhere around 100-200meters in diameter. When I first spotted the disc I could not understand what I was looking at. The eye must associate what it sees with what the brain knows (optics) and so I would have never reconsidered the matter had the UFO not passed directly over my house. From a distance of several miles it appeared to be a flock of white birds heading south. Hardly uncommon, as it slowly drew closer to me I thought maybe I was looking at some kind of helicopter.(I had by now alerted my guests to the event) Once it was on top of us we could see that what had been mistaken for white geese migrating was a ring of bright white lights slowly rotating just enough to make out a sillouhette of the disc against the nightsky, nobody could speak. My small gathering of friends had become a herd of deer in front of headlights. Certainly a once in a lifetime experience. I immediatly called the first aeronautical authority I could think of; the airport laughed at me, the laughter hasnt stopped. You cant talk about this shit without people labelling you a crackpot and why not? Isn't it easier to believe that thousands of eye witnesses are fools or madmen? I always thought so, just keep your eyes on the sky. Everything I've reported is true and I dont care if anyone besides the guests at my BBQ laugh themselves to death. I know what I saw.