Engineers remember tilting train 30 years on

Thirty years after the world's first tilting train carried passengers, engineers behind the project have said the idea that it was a failure still angers them.Developed and built in Derby in the 1970s, the Advanced Passenger Train (APT) started life as an experimental, high speed train capable of travelling up to 155 mph.It was withdrawn from service only four days after its first public run because of problems with the tilt mechanism, and other factors.John Harris, APT project team leader, said the project was abandoned just as it was proving successful."It didn't work very well at times but every time we had a problem we set about solving it. We solved all the problems to the point the train could run successfully in service. I'm very proud of it," he said.Tilting trains do run in Britain but they are of Italian design and were introduced 20 years after the original launch.