Richard Catlow wrote:

Alex Terrell wrote:


I pointed out that the Amtrak Metroliners had proved decades ago that
front doors weren't incompatible with high speeds, and they passed that
info on to the train manufacturers.

Yes indeed the Metroliners do have end corridor connections, but if I
recall correctly they are limited to 125 MPH.

They were designed to run at 160mph. It was only the poor state of the
track that limited them to 125mph.

Until the end of 2001 I was the head of Electrification & Plant for
Union Railways and was initmately involved in the development of the
CTRL domestic rolling stock specification. A few facts:

The units have to be 6 coaches long in order to prevent both
pantographs (1 per unit) from entering the long carrier wire neutral
setions. If they did, a phase to phase short circuit at 44kV would
result.

How come?

In order to maintain the required line capacity, the units were
specified to have a top speed of 140MPH (225 Km/h), with a high rate
of accelleration. The crashworthiness standards for stock of this
speed are very stringent unless you want to end up with the farce
applied to the like of pendolinos where the front half of each leading
vehicle cannot be used for passenger accommodation - a complete non
starter for a commuter train where bums on seats is paramount.

I thought crashworthiness requirements under ATP were lower. If they
aren't, why aren't they. It's ridiculous mandating such high standards
on a line where there's nothing to crash into! An exemption should be
sought even if it requires special legislation to get it.

We consulted 7 rolling stock manufacturers over the crashworthiness
standards and end loadings and not one of them could satisfactorily
engineer the requisite stength with a central corridor connection.

Any idea how far short of the standard the Metroliners fell?

So for other posters on this thread - 16 train cars? Are you serious.
Which platforms could accommodate them (apart from the eurostar
platforms), certainly not rural station platforms unless they were
split to 2 x 8 cars. That's not in the spec, so don't expect that to
happen either!

Are you sure it's not in the spec? UIVMM all the consultation options
included some offpeak splitting at Ashford.