Talk:Pendolino

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Expanding the geographic scope[edit]

This is all about Finland. It needs to be dealt with in historical order, i.e. Italy first. Dunc_Harris|☺ 20:53, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)


It would appear that the author knew about the Finish Pendolino, but the article does note that this was evolved from the Italian ETR's and that it is produced by 'FIAT ferrovia'.

I have been scouting Italian sites for info (I am fluent in Italian), and there is not much, but one thing that is interesting is that the Pendolino dates back to the early 70's. The original design would appear to be contemporary to the APT, and the Pendolino went into service before the APT was even planned to. That would seem to cast doubt on the claim that it is based on the APT.

The only thing I have found so far regarding the APT is Wikipedias entry for the APT which claims that the technology was sold off to Italy for the Pendolino....author duncharris :-) What I know about the Pendolino is that research started in the 1960's with the ALn 668, which had tilting seats, and resulted in a prototype, the ETR Y 0160 which was a real tilting train. This led in turn to the first real production tilting train, the ETR 401. This was built in 1975 and remained in regular service until the early 1980's when the ETR 450's came along.

AFAIK the first Pendolino ETR401 is still officially in service and used for 'specials'. This would seem to pre date the APT, do you have any facts that relate to the Pendolino being based on the APT? --Roger Irwin 23:20, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This article doesn't have a POV problem, really — it's just missing a lot of information. It should, as has been noted, start with the Italian pendolino before moving on to Finland, Britain, and other countries to which the technology has been imported. As far as its relationship with the APT is concerned, my understanding is that, while it was already in design at the time the plug was pulled on the APT (and hence should not be said to be "based" on it), some of the APT technologies were, when that plug was pulled, sold to the already-in-design pendolino. Doops 15:29, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)


The dates do not match. The ETR 401 was allready carrying passengers in 1976, and by the time the APT project was scratched it was up for a major overhaul after 8 years of regular public service. At this point the ETR450 design was well underway and the ETR 401 was used for a while as a test bed for new concepts that would be incorporated into the ETR 450. Presumably it was at this period (1983) that the APT project was available, given the ETR 450 similarity and logical progression from the ETR 401 I assume the ETR 450 is a logical progression. Many sites (at least UK sites) refer to "The APT being sold off to Italy". I assume they are based on some facts but I cannot find any.....I think it would be important to identify what APT technology found it's way into the ETR 450.

One thing I am certain of is that the ETR 401 must have been way ahead of it's time in 1975, and there is no doubt that it was the first tilting train/train designed for higher speeds on existing tracks. As such I think it merits particular attention in an encyclopedia but unfortunately all the sites on the Pendolino seem to just give the 401 (and often the 450's) just a cursory glance before moving on to the sleek new decendents......just like Wikipedia!

I am going to try and get in touch with somebody who worked on the original design project.

--Roger Irwin 21:32, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you find out more about the ETR 401, great; but in the spirit of being bold, I have acted now and tried to put the article into some sensible shape, using Roger Irwin's information (as given above) and Brian Hollingsworth's The Illustrated Directory of Trains of the World. I suspect that much of the detailed description of Pendolino power, suspension, body construction, etc. currently given in the "Finland" § is probably more widely applicable; if somebody has evidence to this effect, please move it to a more "international" part of the article. Doops 23:06, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Well, sometimes you have to stop talking and start writing :-) In the meantime I have discovered that the ETR450 was a direct decendent of the ETR401, whilt the ETR460 was much modernised. This is the model that the finish trains are based on whilst the later ETR480 model formed the basis for the Virgin trains. Eventually I will knock this all into a brief timeline with specs. --Roger Irwin 12:14, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hello i'am italian and i know very well the history of the Pendolino. This link is very interesting: http://www.culturaferroviaria.it/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=16 As you may see the world first pendular train was built in Italy in 1969 and was called ETR Y 0160. This was an electric automotors tha was used to experiment the tilting system governed by means of gyroscopes. The base of the system is to find elevation of the external track before the railway corner begin. This information and the speed information give the time to move the opportunely the carriage and reduce the centrifugal force on passengers.

If you want to see of the trains they hang in action you do not come in Italy: because of the insufficient maintenance has not been repairs the gyroscopes and they do not hang. Go to Swiss where the tilt everyday :-)

Spain ETR 490 Alaris is missing.

BR sale of tilt technology to Fiat[edit]

Can I ask, just how much of the technology was sold to Fiat? I was given the figure of about 90% but none of the wiki pages mentions just how much of a contribution British Rail's system made to Pendolino. Also, am I right in saying that the earlier versions of Pendolino used a gravity based system as opposed to a software based system (hence the name) Pendolino = Pendulum

All I do know is that the APT was almost ready, and given a few more months, the small technical problems would have been sorted - typical of my country.. "It'll never work, it's useless" and "How much is it gonna cost us now??...". We have the best engineers in the world, yet our country never lets them spread their wings - more space in the rest of the world :)

77.98.9.169 00:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC) Ross[reply]


(This is copied from my 'Discussion' entry under the 'Tilting Trains' entry here)

'It's difficult to support the statement that some aspects of the APT project were purchased by the Pendelino group. While it's possible that this took place in other areas, in the case of the tilt systems the two trains are not compatible in any way. Pendelinos use a different geometry, different control philosophy and different actuation systems. The history of this is somewhat muddied due to the various commercial changes that took place after BR was privatised.

ASEA was the group that purchased the part of BR which owned the tilt technology, and was then merged with Brown Boveri to form ABB. At some time this group developed the Swedish X2000 train which has a very similar tilt system to that used on APT-P and in the 'what goes around., comes around' scenario a similar system is used on current Virgin Super Voyager trains in the UK supplied by Bombardier, who took-over ABB, by then entitled ADtranz.

The Pendelinos, including the Virgin run Class 390 trains in the UK, on the other hand, are supplied by Alstom, who bought out Fiat Ferroviaria who developed the Pendelino concept originally. Altsom purchased the vehicle manufacturing part of BR, rather than the R&D part, as far as I've been able to discover. While the Pendelino development team may be 'the same old team', although I doubt it after this length of time, the BR team has long since been disbanded and relatively few of us are working in the same field any more.

The existence of at least two different types of tilt system in service, Pendelino and APT-P, in Europe at the present time, bears out these statements I hope.' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kit Spackman (talk • contribs) 17:59, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If it's 'unsigned' how come my signature appears immediately underneath your comment? Regards, Kit Spackman (talk) 17:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It was unsigned at the time the bot signed your post [1] [2]. You can also tell this by the fact the bot's signature is timestamped before your signature. The bot is not magic and so cannot know you intend to sign your post in the future, and it normally aims to sign posts quickly to avoid problems due to edit conflicts. In fact, it has very, very limited AI, so even if you wrote "I intend to sign later" or you are always doing this, it should wouldn't know you intend to sign later. You can tell it not to sign a specific post, but you have to use the right magicword. Alternatively you can either sign your post when posting, or tell the bot never to sign your posts (see User:SineBot#Singleperson)) if this is a problem. And after you have 800 posts, the bot will automatically stop signing yours posts, unless you tell it to. Finally you should feel free to remove the signatures added by the bot if you later sign. (On some occasions, if you are editing your post you may get a hidden edit conflict, so you probably want to check that after you edit.) Nil Einne (talk) 19:29, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Regards, Kit Spackman (talk) 18:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regenerative braking[edit]

I've seen that Virgin Trains advertise the fact that their Pendolino trains use regenerative brakes, feeding the power back into the national grid. How common is this? Does it deserve a mention in the article, or do all modern trains use regenerative braking? --StuartBrady (Talk) 15:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of name[edit]

I recently removed the following text because it appeared to be original research. The author claims that he has it "on good authority from Italians" and would like it to be re-instated. However, I can find no independent verification for the claims and the current manufacturers' brochure [3] clearly states that the name derives from the tilting mechanism. Since it's unverified at the moment, I'm placing it here for discussion.

Please note, there is a lot of confusion about this. Think about a pendulum - it swings in an arc, suspended from its top point. That is the opposite of the tilting of a train - the top of the train moves through an arc whilst the bottom stays fixed. Also think about a pendulum - it swings steadily from side to side, accellerating through its journey then stopping at each side before commencing its journey back. Just like a SHUTTLE train in fact, going backwards and forwards between - for instance - Rome and Milan. This is where the word pendolino originated. The word "pendolismo" is the Italian for "commuting". Many of the shuttle trains are indeed now tilting trains, but by no means all of them. So on two counts, the metaphor of a pendulum is contrary to the motion of a tilting train - (a) the tilting trains are upside down pendulums and (b) they don't swing rhythmically from side to side - luckily for the passengers who would otherwise be seasick!

Unfortunately, Virgin trains have now branded their tilters as "pendolinos" and therefore we are saddle with an inappropriate and unthought-out metaphor for the foreseeable future.

Cosmo0 10:30, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a bit shabby, especially considering the manufacturer's brochure clearly contradicts the claim that the name isn't be based on the word "pendulum". In any case, if a source is provided this section would definately need to be heavily rewritten - I'm a at loss as to what the original authoer actually meant. -- Kjet 12:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If "pendolismo" is the Italian for "commuting", Norwegian pendling means just the same though it originally was used only if the commuter crossed at least one municipality border. By the same way, pendeltog, pendlertog and Swedish pendeltåg means commuting trains. In Norwegian, we do also say e.g. IC-pendelen (i.e. commuting trains in an intercity area). Pål Jensen (talk) 08:59, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are not photos of the original italian pendolinos.. it is quite ironic! ;-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.9.227.246 (talk) 09:25, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

PHOTOS[edit]

There are not photos of the original italian pendolinos.. it is quite ironic being the base models for every pendolinos! ;-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.9.227.246 (talk) 09:26, 1 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Improvements[edit]

Ahoj! I reorganized and enlarged the article in order to stress the Italian chapter, which is reasonable as this technology was created there. Thus some descriptive parts which appeared in the Finnish section have been placed in the ETR 460 section, as this train was built before the Sm3. Other things I introduced are a sketchy history of Italian prototypes, revisions of captions, figure sizes etc. --Attilios (talk) 19:12, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Still to add[edit]

Just the export destinations with the longest and second-longest history were missing: Spain and Germany. I added Spain now, and will add Germany, where Pendolino technology was used in a number of tilting trains, sometime later. --Rontombontom (talk) 14:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pendolino's in Romania ?[edit]

is an Italian family of tilting trains used in (list of countries) and shortly in Romania and Poland. Poland of course is right, but I never heard of a Romanian Pendolino order ? I think it would also be too far away for the Polish units to operate, so also that seems unlikely. I think we can safely remove this in the list of mentioned countries. --Btrs (talk) 18:14, 2 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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