Has anyone else noticed how on the new Avelia Liberty Acela train, the coaches and power cars aren’t entirely streamlined. The coaches bulge out a little beyond the power car. For something where streamlining is essential, it seems a bit odd to have this in the design.
The coaches are tilt profile while the power cars don't tilt - tilt is primarily for passenger comfort
It's also worth noting the coaches are in BR Blue. The power cars sound great, though, like a Class 373 mixed with a Class 374.
The Avelia Horizon however has the same shape between the power cars and coaches and it’s double decker but I’m intrigued that they’ve kept the two tones horn for the Liberty
I think it's because the coaches tilt while the power car doesn't, to being able be within the correct loading gauge they have to get smaller towards the top (you can see the exact same thing for the british tilting trains, the UK also has a tiny loading gauge). You can imagine as the coach tilts the angled side becomes perpendicular to the ground. I think the discrepancy between the power car and the coaches is due to a design change THIS IS ALL SPECULATION, but you can see how the design has changed over these 4 years, and now it seems to have gone from an all-new bespoke system to now incorporating a lot of traits of the upcoming Avelia Horizon trainsets for SNCF I think what happened is that after Amtrak reached out to them, this whole new SNCF train happened and they figured out it would make more sense to develop a similar train for both countries (at least for power car design and overall appearance, I'd imagine some internal components will have to be different), and they also decided to use more "standard" tilting coaches (maybe using the basis of some old Pendolino coaches) instead of going on with that all new bespoke train. So I think either modified the Liberty so it could be used for a basis for the Horizon, where the flat sides make more sense, or the Liberty was modified so it wouldn't have to be too different from other Alstom products.
this is normal because the French version is not Tilting and the American version is a Tilting version
Can you not. Yelling isn't going to get you anywhere. No need to trash talk about different platforms either. Also you have bumped a post from a year ago which is not allowed according to the rules unless you have a useful contribution which it clearly isn't
Same thing with its brother the TGV M, high speed train from Alsthom were designed way better than the actual one from Alstom, they kinda lost their personality sadly
One reason for this is to save costs. Furthermore the US version can also be sold to the European Market if an Operator wanted tilt capability on their Avelia High speed train to complete with Talgo 350 Tango Avril both use the Talgo tilt method in the 250-320 kmh (155-200 mph) market. The 1.95m pantograph Metalized carbon strip is used to feed 15kv 16.7hz AC while the 1.45m carbon strip is used to feed Italian 3kv DC if the US version was also sold in Europe if needed and modified to fit European loading gauge.
There’s no need to sell the US version in Europe or anywhere else as it’s not a special version but just a regular new generation of high speed train from the Avelia family, the only difference is that it’s using the Tiltronix tilt technology already used on Pendolino used in Italy or China and so on. The US is the only operator yet to use the tilt system and France is using a non tilt one as it’s a double decker version and there’s no need of tilt system with the generous curve radius of HSL. In Europe they prefer to buy the Pendolino as it’s an EMU and not a set with 2 power cars
US versions of European designs, including the Liberty, are massively overweight = slow and sluggish, because of the brutally heavy reinforcement required by US gov't "crashworthiness" standards. Therefore no European or Asian RR would be remotely interested.
guys, I know this is an older thread, but if you can, pls answer I have noticed during my test runs in Training Center (where I turned off safety systems and turned on cruise control at higher speed so the tilting was active and also I could watch in close-up how the bogies and such behave in curve) and also in timetable runs that power cars didnt tilt, only the coaches is this normal / prototypical to real Acelas? or is it some bug? cos I was under the impression (maybe it was just my lack of knowledge) that tilting trains also have the power cars tilting, but maybe Acela is different?
Yep, only the coaches tilt for passenger comfort but not both power cars. So yeah it’s not a bug, it’s prototypical.
and that applies to both Acela and Avelia (I know both kind of have different titling technologies)? wow, and I thought that sth was off there
Yep, the Avelia Liberty too won’t have tilting power cars but only coaches. The tilting system is Tiltronix.
ok thats weird then as far as I checked, Acela and few others are "special" in that other Pendolinos usually tilt as a whole, even power cars, but Acela and such dont... very weird
