975386

Photo of 975386 at Derby RTC

Vehicles in this photo

The following vehicle(s) appear in this photo.

  • 975386 - Laboratory 4 'Hastings'

Photo details

Favourites


Your comments

  • Ben Williams

    23 November 2004, 08:35:29

    The narrow profile of this former Hasting line coach made it an ideal test-bed for experiments into the tilting suspension system, as a the vehicle body could be tilted whilst still remaining within the standard loading gauge.

    Thanks to info from http://www.apt-p.com

  • Kit Spackman

    9 July 2007, 15:34:20

    This view shows Hastings in its original colour scheme, BR Blue/Red. At that time it had instrumentation mounted in the far end as seen in the photo, a small ride evaluation compartment in the centre, as shown by the large windows and the Mk III tilt hydraulic pack mounted in the near end. Access for the latter was via the double doors that are just visible to the left of the guard's door.

    The doors also allowed the hydraulic oil to drip out of the vehicle when the tilt pack sprung a leak, as it did quite often during the testing!

    Unfortunatel I was usually the guy doing the testing........

  • Kit Spackman

    18 August 2007, 13:16:12

    I've checked my records recently and found that I wasn't quite correct about the age of the colour scheme. The scheme shown above was actually the second version, with yellow coach ends, although this isn't all that apparent in a B&W photo. The other end incidentally has two windows for the brakeman to observe the track when propelling.

    Originally the red window panel area extended round both ends of the vehicle, even the white border went round the ends as well! The titling then read 'Laboratory 4 Hastings' with all the words located toward the ends of the vehicle, rather than with the 'Hastings' title centred as shown above.

    I'm not sure when the scheme was changed, but it must have been before April 1978 as I left BR then and I have photos showing the revised scheme.


Make a comment

You need to login/register to post a comment.
More details can be found here.