Where do the trains tilt?

Everyone who traveled on the train remembers the soothing rocking of the car from side to side.At the same time, the average speed of a regular passenger train is sixty kilometers per hour. And now imagine if you disperse it faster, and even the road will be with turns? At such turns, passengers who will stagger from wall to wall will get seasick. How then do high-speed trains go, accelerating to two hundred or more kilometers per hour. Interesting?

Then we'll have to dig a little deeper into history.

For the first time they thought about eliminating discomfort from centrifugal forces back in the distant nineteen hundred and thirty-eighth year. Then the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway company put an experiment on its San Diegan trains. Unfortunately, the result could not be achieved. Eighteen years later, there was a similar attempt by the French Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français. But the positive dynamics appeared only in the seventies. Then Talgo launched its trains with a passive tilt on the Iberian Peninsula. Yes, it turns out that trains can not just tilt. Their slope still has varieties. Passive is realized due to the inertia of the tilted body, which compensates for the centrifugal force when turning. In the eighties, the Talgo Pendular train series is already spreading across Europe. Their commercial use has begun.

In North America, too, they did not lag behind. And in nineteen sixty-eight, United Aircraft TurboTrain performed regular flights on Canadian National Railways.

Almost on a par with the Spaniards, the Japanese also launched their tilting trains. Japanese National Railways and the Shinano Company in nineteen seventy-three put into operation the express under the three hundred and eighty-one series. Also with a passive tilt. For an active, computer-controlled train, large costs are required, and only in the mid-eighties the Advanced Passenger Train, a train with an active tilt, begins to work in England.

And although the appearance of tilting trains was a breakthrough in the moment of compensation of centrifugal force, the costs of creating such trains were very significant and because of this, even the advantage of increasing the speed of movement did not justify itself. But the speed of our life required more opportunities every day. And gradually the use of tilting trains has become a wide stream all over the world.

At the same time, Europe, Asia, Australia and America use an active slope more, and trains based on Spanish Talgo with inertial correction run in Russia and Kazakhstan. In them, the tilt mechanism assumes that the body is rotated by a relatively conventional turning point located above the level of the roof of the car. Then, while moving along the curve, the car tilts towards the outer rail under the action of centrifugal force at an angle that can reach up to three and a half degrees. An example with a similar mechanism is the Alma-Ata - Astana train of the Talgo 200 series. As well as the Russian Allegro, which helps residents of St. Petersburg to get to Helsinki and back. This is a high-speed train of the Pendolino trademark, which is manufactured by Alstom.

For the movement of such trains, it was necessary to improve the railways. Although for this it was necessary to attract large investments. So the British railway company Network Rail spent eight billion pounds sterling on the modernization of the West Coast main line, while the cost of the train was estimated at eleven million pounds sterling for two thousand and fifth year. The upgraded tracks required a certain speed limit, which, however, differed depending on the country using such trains.

On the territory of the European Union, new routes had to be overcome at a speed of two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, which corresponds to a speed of one hundred and fifty-five miles per hour. On upgraded roads, two hundred kilometers per hour or one hundred and twenty-four miles per hour. In Japan, the values were higher. Two hundred and thirty kilometers per hour on high-speed and two hundred and seventy on new ones.

How do they ensure that a person who is traveling on a train does not feel that the train is moving along a curve. The tilt system itself provides a state when the transverse acceleration of the car becomes close to zero. Then the passenger feels most comfortable. In addition to passive and active slopes, there is also a combined option. It is called semi-active or controlled passive. In this case, the tilt itself is also passive, but slows down due to the active suspension, which is controlled by a computer. This option is often used by the Japanese on their railways.

The use of tilting high-speed trains has reduced travel time. Passenger comfort has also increased, but, unfortunately, there have been exceptions. Some people in this type of trains can get quite seasick. This is not a significant drawback, because now there are a lot of medicines that will help on the road. But still, such cases are noted quite often. Despite this and the high cost of the trains themselves, as well as the fact that they require additional track equipment, tilting trains are manufactured by a dozen companies and are widely used in different countries.