Pendolino Trains

Now, in many countries, you can see pendular
trains transporting passengers at high speeds (200 km/h). I remember well those beautiful Italian Cisalpino ones going through the Alps or the very famous Talgos linking Spanish cities. But, only a few know that the Pendolino technology was actually introduced in Canada and USA. As early as in 1972, as shown on the picture, you could see the United Aircraft Corp. Turbo-Train entering Montreal in its original Canadian National colors. One can at least that it was an interesting collaboration project.

In the first picture, you can see it approching Montreal city center. This train included two innovations:
- the passive pendular tilting mechanims, manufactured by Montreal Light Works Ltd,
- the turbine powered locomotive, manufactured by United Aircraft from its Longueil factory in Montreal's susburbs.

The train was cruising at 150 km/h between Montreal and Toronto and this was a real performance for Canada. But, the bad CN rail quality led to two accidents which resulted speed limitations since this train could reach 220 km/h.

But, the Montrealers continued to investigate faster trains. This technology was sold to Bombardier along with the one from the English HST which never gave the expected results being often breaking down. The tilting wagons were improved and adapted to a heavy new diesel locomotive which became the world's fastest diesel of the moment, named the LRC, standing for Light, Rapid and Comfortable. The train could smoothly ride for long period at 200 km/h and , in 1981, it could link the 550 km of the Montreal to Toronto distance in les than 5 hours, downtown to downtown. On the picture, we can see one arriving from Quebec City after it was recently revamped. The LRC were fitted with an active tilting mechanism. In fact, each wheel set was connected by an hydraulic piston to the chassis. For one coach, four pistons had to be synchronized in order to insure proper tilting. Their commissionning was quite a challenge.

Well, this technology is the one that you find on most modern pendolinos:
- the Spanish Talgos from 1978,
- the Italian ETR made by FIAT in 1987,
- the Swedish followed with the ABB X2000.

In the next picture, one can appreciate the Italian ETR operated by Cisalpino between Geneva and Milan. I was lucky to take this train on a few occasions.











Altough many countries tried Pendolino projects, the first to really do it are still the USA-Canada people from UAC. Now, Bombardier has evolved to be the world leader of that technology.

The Bombardier system is now installed on all fast passenger trains roving throughout Great Britain and even on the sleek German ICE-3.










On the diagram, you can see the articulated tilting mechanism
which was used on the MLW Turbo-Train wagons. The tilting principle was a passive one which had the advantage of being "natural" in the sens that the wagon was tilting proportionaly to the centrifugal force. In this waw, some people did not suffer from tilting sickness as seen on Italian or Swedish active systems.