SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the only-advanced-passengers-can-ride-it dept.
Back in the olden days (1960s) there was a British Rail research project to develop a train that could travel at high speed on Birtain's 19th Century railway lines. The project became the Advanced Passenger Train.
The APT employed a tilting mechanism to allow it to go around curves up to 40% faster than conventional trains. It could achieve speeds of 160mph, when not held up by slower traffic. There were even gas turbine-powered prototypes, however in 1981 three electrical trains were built.
Unfortunately, the journalists invited to experience the first Glasgow to London run were plied with drink and reported that the tilting mechanism made them feel sick. Mechanical problems followed, and the trains were withdrawn from service.
They were reintroduced in 1984 but were withdrawn in 1986 for good.
The technology was adopted by other companies in France and Italy, and now Virgin Trains uses the tilting Italian/French Pendolinos on the West Coast Main Line.
[Amtrak in the USA uses tilting technology on the Acela Express line along the Northeast Corridor. -Ed.]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @12:01PM
So - the trains here is the tilting I've installed long ago, but were to be allowed for the West I don't use maple syrup will also encounter considerable societal resistance. Maybe I'm missing something here . If there was an adrenaline junkie as far as I can, and now a fresh search for good you might have been mentioned.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @12:08PM
Not awful, but I've seen better bot-posts.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @12:23PM
Would you kindly stop shoving words into my glasses. Hot fluids of neutrons that flow without friction, superconductors made of plastic then she must be entirely imaginary. No, our enemy is the same site (or to kill off the CD again -- the next round of copycat killings.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @01:45PM
My first markov-chain-based text generation program wasn't too much better. Give him/her time.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday December 31 2015, @01:54PM
Cool tech. On topic. Other than the lack of news? Like are they expanding the Acela or trying again in the UK and the poster assumed we all know, or ...
I always thought it would be interesting to have a smart suspension for a car, little webcams watching the road ahead and pre-stressing the suspension to smooth it dynamically. "look out a pothole in 23 milliseconds, open the dampening oriface in the shocks, but make sure they're closed again for the turn coming up in 13415 milliseconds"
(Score: 1) by kazzie on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:38PM
It's not really news at this point in time. When the franchise to run tilting trains along the West Coast Mainline is re-let over the next two years, bidders may want to invest in more/new trains, which will have to be tilting ones, or run slower and muck up the timetables.
A better topic of conversation would be to compare the APT with the HST (or Intercity 125 [wikipedia.org]), and the management of both projects. While the flagship APT was being designed by a team of the finest engineers in the country, the HST was commissioned by the British Railways Board in the 1970s as a stopgap measure, put together by in-house railway engineers. The APT continued to be developed and developed, until it was finally shelved in the 80s.* The HST, on the other hand, entered service in 1976, is still in use today, and is expected to be used in Scotland for at least a further decade, if not longer.
*The technology developed on the APT was used successfully in a number of subsequent trains built by British Rail, but politically the project was an embarrassment and failure.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 31 2015, @04:13PM
Like are they expanding the Acela or trying again in the UK and the poster assumed we all know
The West Coast Mainline has used tilting trains since 2003.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday December 31 2015, @10:46PM
Tilting the cars seem an odd thing to do.
Yeah, it moves the center of mass to the inside of the curve, but without a tilted track, all this does is allow higher speed at the expense of pushing the track out of its bed toward the outside of the curve. It puts horizontal stress on the rails and tries to slide the ties(sleepers) outboard. Horizontal force on a rail is a bad idea, because it relies too much on the wheel flange.
Wouldn't you want the track tilted?
Anyway the wiki says they can't tilt the Acela more than 4.2 degrees or they would lose clearance on the next track over, and also lose connection to the overhead centenary. (Its an electric train).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 31 2015, @02:05PM
While I appreciate the tilting every week on the WCML on the 177 mile trip, the downside is to fit in the existing loading guage (dating back 150 years), is narrow trains. The seats are crammed, and unless you travel in the peak it's a horrendous place to be. Travel in the peak and the 20-minute frequency on Manchester-London means plenty of room.
The reason tilting trains are so useful in some lines (like the WCML and the US East Coast) is because of the age of the lines. The WCML is very bendy, winding through towns and round hills, and running a train at 125mph (let alone a more normal 180mph), requires this type of specialisation. As more and more high speed transport goes on new lines (like HS1 and HS2 in the UK), the need for tilting will diminish. The East Coast mainline, London-Peteborough-Doncaster-York-Edinburgh, runs at 125mph but doesn't need tilting due to the flat nature of the terrain.
Nethertheless, it's a good example of a system built and launched by engineers, rather than by a team, and how dangerous things can go if the public perception isn't right. PR might be simply professional lying, but getting it right can make a massive difference.
The WCML has track diagrams for South [networkrail.co.uk] and North [networkrail.co.uk]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 31 2015, @07:02PM
the downside is to fit in the existing loading guage (dating back 150 years), is narrow trains. The seats are crammed,
I take it you haven't ridden in an airplane?
I'm guessing you Brits have the exact same gauge tracks that we Americans do (4'8.5"), since it seems to be a standard for the whole western world. I've ridden on Amtrak here on the east coast of the US, and the seats are quite comfortable, about equivalent to first-class seats in a large airliner. They're no narrower than the seats in my car, and certainly nothing like the horrible little seats in coach class on a typical airline.
Maybe you guys just got stuck with crappy little seats on your trains; there really should be room for normal-size ones. On the Amtrak trains, each row has 4 seats.
(Score: 2, Informative) by kazzie on Thursday December 31 2015, @07:21PM
The tracks are of the same gauge as yours, it's the loading gauge [wikipedia.org] that's the issue. When we started building railways (before everyone else), the tunnels were built as wide as was practical for the time. Over the decades, rather than attempt to widen existing tunnels, we've built carriages and trains to fit the tunnels we've got. It does mean that our carriages are narrower than countries that started building their railways later (which is most of the world).
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 31 2015, @08:51PM
Oh, that sucks. The Amtrak trains here in the US have rather wide carriages; sometimes I wonder if the tracks aren't too narrow for the size of the cars, but I guess as long as you don't go around a curve too fast it's OK.
You guys need to widen your tunnels!
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 31 2015, @07:38PM
I take it you haven't ridden in an airplane?
I avoid short haul, and fly business class or better long haul. I flew premium economy about a year ago back from LA but had an exit seat.
I've done NY-Washington a few times on Amtrak, and it's fine. But then HSTs in the UK are fine too, 4 across. As are the Meridians on the MML. Even in First class the Pendilinos on the London-Manchester and London-Glasgow run feel cramped.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 31 2015, @02:06PM
I saw something months ago about a car that would tilt "like a motorcycle". I dismissed it as bullshit, because using hydraulics to tilt a car does nothing for traction. The tilt only makes the passengers more comfortable on the curve, because the seat remains in line with their apparent gravitational thrust.
The reason for a motorcycle tilting, is the shape of a motorcycle tire. The tire is sectionally rounded, with a decreasing radius the further from the center you get. The leaning tires steer the bike, you steer the bike by "turning" the handlebars. The car tires have a flattened, square cross section, and they do not leant, cannot lean. You don't steer a car by leaning, but by turning the steering wheels.
Here, they want to make a whole train lean. And I don't see the point to it at all. If they want to take the curves faster, they need to bank the track. Leaning the train is only going to make the passengers more comfortable, it will do nothing to make them safer. I just can't see it.
The track at Daytona has an awesome bank built into it. Cars and motorcycles can run at crazy speeds in the curves, because the tires can "push" "down" onto the banked surface. The faster you go, the more solidly the tires grip the surface. Cars and motorcycles alike, running around the same radius curve without banking, are going to fly off the track if they don't slow down.
It looks to me like some engineers missed some very basic physics in their first years of college. They will gain nothing using hydraulics to make a vehicle "lean like a motorcycle". Hanna-Barberra and Disney can get away with that, because they don't observe the laws of physics that we in the real world must observe.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @02:36PM
Apparently you missed some very basic physics in your first years of college.
To stay on track the resultant force on the train has to stay inside the base of support (i.e. between the tracks). In a turn you have to compensate the centrifugal force by "moving" the center of mass towards the inside of the curve. It is the same for the motorcycle, by the way, and it has nothing to do with the tire shape. In fact, the opposite is true: the tire is rounded to help the tilting of the motorcycle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:00PM
After reading that explanation, I question if Runaway1956 has even ridden a bicycle or motorcycle.
Though, I learned that it was possible to crash into level ground surprisingly late. (Protip: if you are suddenly upright after a pedal strike, DO NOT force the bike back into a lean (via counter-steering).)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:22PM
Ed's link to the wikipedia only verifies what I have said. That Acela Express is capable of running 180 mph, but the track is shit, and they only average 84 mph. The track won't support the speed, so the train isn't being utilized to it's potential. Leaning the train gains them nothing when the track is garbage.
Build the track up, bank the damned thing, and then 100 year old technology trains can run on the damned track at speeds of 100 mph +. NEW TECH on a NEW TRACK could easily average 180 mph.
Read the article, then read my post. All that they are achieving on the Acela line, is to make the passengers more comfortable.
And, no, you have no idea what you're talking about regarding motorcycle tires. Wikipedia was kind enough to supply the math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_dynamics#Turning [wikipedia.org]
This page slaps you in the face with the obvious, right at the very top. Look at the image on the left side, and the caption: "A cone will roll in a circle". http://genjac.com/BoomerBiker/Two%20Wheeled%20Physics.htm [genjac.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:46PM
Cars can move faster with active suspension:
Banned! Active suspension [f1fanatic.co.uk]
Corrected second link: TWO WHEELED PHYSICS [genjac.com]
I suspect that without active tilt, the train would only be able to move at like 50MPH on the shit track.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:49PM
Welp, I think we found a bug: the %20's in the link are stripped out; even it I specify HTML formatting.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 31 2015, @04:14PM
Apologies for posting a crap link - your second attempt does fix it. Oddly, when I copy/paste the link from the window opened with your link, I get the $20's back again. Ehhh . . .
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:29PM
http://genjac.com/BoomerBiker/Two%20Wheeled%20Physics.htm [genjac.com]
Nothing to do with the shape of a motorcycle tire? Click the link. Right at the top of the page, there is an image, with a caption. "A cone will roll in a circle". That conical shape is what turns your two-wheeled vehicle.
At speeds under about 2 or 3 mph, you steer your bike just like you steer a car - point the front wheel into the turn, and you go that way. At higher speeds, you COUNTER STEER your bike, that is, you attempt to turn your tire away from the turn. The bike leans over, and the decreasing circumference of your tire presents that conical shape to the surface of the road. In effect, your motorcycle tire is "rolling downhill".
Don't worry if you don't understand it - it comes naturally to monkeys. It doesn't require a lot of thinking, just hop on the bike and do it. Thinking to hard causes people to crash.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by kazzie on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:55PM
This compensation can be achieved by canting (tilting) the rails into the curve. The ideal cant depends on the speed a train goes around the curve. In a mixed-traffic railway, like the one the APT was built for, you have to pick a cant that caters relatively well to slow freight trains and faster passenger trains. If you then want to introduce a faster express service (the APT was aiming for 155mph) you can't increase the cant without mucking things up for the slow freight. There are two potential solutions: Smooth out the tight curves, or tilt the express trains into the curve.
There's another reason for chasing after tilting technology. Long before a train is in danger of derailing from going too quickly around an uncanted curve, passengers are going to complain about the comfort of the ride. Ironically, early publicity runs of the APT had complaints about a queasy ride, either because the tilt system was overcompensating for the curves, or because the journalists had been overdoing the alcohol before boarding. This didn't help its public image whatsoever.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday December 31 2015, @11:49PM
Centrifugal force doesn't exist, and isn't particularly relevant in this instance. The correct way to say it is that in a turn you need to create the necessary centripetal force to keep the train on the turn.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 4, Informative) by rleigh on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:55PM
Railways are built by engineers. Quite unsurprisingly, the tracks are already banked to allow the trains to encounter curves at high speed, and have been for a long long time (since the steam age--this is hardly a new revelation). If they didn't, they would derail. (Easy to test this for yourself with a model railway set.) If you're ever in a train which is forced to stop for a red signal on such a section, you really do appreciate how steep the bank can be! When you're going at high speed, you don't even notice the corner. The APT and later trains such as the Pendolino are tilting the train in addition to the banking already in place. Think about this another way: the static track banking angle is engineered to make the curve imperceptible at a single speed only, e.g. 120mph. If you go slower, e.g. 80mph then the angle is too steep; if you go faster e.g. 160mph then the angle is too shallow. The train tilting allows dynamic adjustment of the angle, i.e. can be computed in realtime from the current speed and the known bank angle, so that the curve is imperceptible over a much larger speed range.
I was on an 11-coach Pendolino a couple of days back on the Preston-Edinburgh section of the line. If you compare this to the older InterCity125 trains, the improvement is significant. Not that the old trains were bad, but the addition of the tilting to the train makes the corners almost imperceptible. I can take a paper cup full of hot tea and put it open on the table, and there's barely a ripple; on the older trains it would have tipped over on the bends, or at the very least slid along the table. And they are so quiet. Altogether a really nice improvement, and very pleasant (and fast) to travel in.
Back to the original article, the APT failed despite getting all the basic engineering right. What changed? All the nice engineering feats they pulled off were brand new and immature, and problems were encountered when they were first put into service. Fast forward 20 years, and Acela turned the concepts BR proved worked, but were unreliable and not fully polished, into a dependable and solid product. And also worthy of mention is it's all digitally controlled; every curve on the track is programmed into the system, which makes it immediately responsive. One of the reasons people felt sick on the APT was that the hydraulics activating the tilting were almost, but not perfectly in sync with the curves. Not a problem with the tilting mechanism, but with the responsiveness of the system to its environment. I'm not sure of the exact capabilities of the Pendolino system to react in realtime, and if can learn changes on the fly as well, but however it's implemented my recent of experience of it was that it's absolutely excellent.
Another side to the story is that this is yet another example of a failure to capitalise on British engineering successes due to the beancounters not funding the research and development well enough and/or dropping it before it could be made into a commercial success. At least it saw the light of day once it was sold off.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 31 2015, @04:33PM
Good post, rleigh - it helps to put things in perspective. When I referred to safety, I was only thinking about the train making it safely around the curve. I did dismiss the possibility of passengers inside of the train being thrown around. If tilting is primarily aimed at "turbulence", yeah, it's probably worth it.
Oh - British engineering? It's pretty awesome, I must admit. No one else has figured out how to replace the magic smoke outside of a laboratory!
http://www.keithbloom.com/vgvanilla/discussion/4/lucas-replacement-wiring-harness-smoke-kit/p1 [keithbloom.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nuke on Thursday December 31 2015, @05:11PM
rleigh wrote :-
the APT failed despite getting all the basic engineering right. What changed? All the nice engineering feats they pulled off were brand new and immature, and problems were encountered when they were first put into service. Fast forward 20 years, and Acela turned the concepts BR proved worked
I was very close to the APT project, although not directly involved. The engineering was brilliant, with no more teething problems than one would expect with such fundamentally new concepts. There was very little "traditional" railway engineering in the APT (in contrast with the contemporary HST). They were both good projects, by rival teams literally on the opposite sides of a road in Derby. The APT involved quantum leaps forward, most of which have been subsequently adopted by high speed train makers elsewhere in the World - except in the UK which has since given up on any serious engineering in almost all fields :-(
One of the reasons people felt sick on the APT was that the hydraulics activating the tilting were almost, but not perfectly in sync with the curves. Not a problem with the tilting mechanism, but with the responsiveness of the system to its environment.
The APT tilted to leave the occupants with zero lateral force - to exact balance. With a little more development time they would have discovered that the trick of not making the passengers sick is to under-corrrect slightly - a simple software change. It seems that when passengers see the horizon outside of the windows tilt, the body expects to feel a curve, or gets nauseous. Today's tilting trains do under-correct.
Another side to the story is that this is yet another example of a failure to capitalise on British engineering successes due to the beancounters
The whole APT project cost was peanuts. The contemporary project of designing the Austin Metro (a British mini car, using an existing engine and gearbox) was higher. Two factors were even more important than beancounters :-
1) Mrs Thatcher hated trains.
2) Journalists hate trains.
Mrs Thatcher was looking for an excuse to axe the APT because she wanted railways to fade into history, but was hesitating because she was advised that the APT was World leading tech. Running out of time, the APT project managers took a chance to save the project by inviting journalists on a publicity run before the train was fully de-bugged. The run was a disaster : not only were the journos sick with too much free Scotch whisky, but the train was brought to a halt by icicles on the overhead catenary - one of the worse days ever for the problem, and one that would affect any train. So the journalists delivered the criticism that Mrs Thatcher needed to wield her axe.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 31 2015, @07:24PM
Another side to the story is that this is yet another example of a failure to capitalise on British engineering successes due to the beancounters not funding the research and development well enough and/or dropping it before it could be made into a commercial success. At least it saw the light of day once it was sold off.
Don't feel bad, we Americans have a long history of similar stuff. W. Edwards Deming is a prime example: invented statistical process control, the American companies didn't care, so he went to Japan and revolutionized their manufacturing with it.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:56PM
They will gain nothing using hydraulics to make a vehicle "lean like a motorcycle".
Won't they? Because they have for the last 30 years (for active tilt - 40 for passive). It doesn't just "make the ride more comfortable", which you seem to dismiss, this isn't the difference between 2 and 4 ply paper, it's the difference between a usable table or not, or being able to walk down the train or not.
The reason you can't bank the train is because you need to have slower trains running on the same track (or indeed faster trains running slowly due to speed restriction). You've also got a problem with a reduced loading guage if you bank the track (which affects the shape of tilting trains too, but banking the track effects the non-tilting trains - like the 350s that run on the WCML at 110mph rather than 125, and of course the freight
The difference between the APT of 30 years ago and today's Pendilino's and Voyagers is how much the lateral forces are cancelled out. On the APT they were cancelled completely, so you never had any side movement. This did lead to motion sickness. On modern trains they don't cancel completely, there's still a feeling of movement, just not as much.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 31 2015, @04:25PM
I think rleigh explains that the tracks are banked in England, and he also explains how this tilting benefits faster and slower traffic alike. I simply cannot see how the tilting enables the train to go significantly faster, safely. That is, tilting alone isn't going to allow a train to travel 100 mph on an unbanked track which is only safe at 50 mph for non-tilting trains. Yeah, they might squeeze 60 mph out of the 50 mph curve, but the unsafe track still remains an unsafe track, so there is risk involved.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by kazzie on Thursday December 31 2015, @05:07PM
A tilt mechanism won't get you from 50mph to 100mph on the same curve - you won't double your speed. The current incarnation of tilting technology in the UK was designed to up the maximum speeds from ~100mph to 140mph, a 40% increase. You could conceivably go faster without derailing, but the issues of passenger comfort and braking distances need to be addressed.
(As it turns out, the signalling upgrades to permit 140mph went hugely over budget, were rescoped, and the trains are only allowed to run up to 125mph today.)
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Thursday December 31 2015, @05:18PM
The reason is simple physics: centripetal force encountered by a train (or bike or car or runner) around a curve will act to pull the moving object out at a tangent to the curve (inertia). For a car, this is countered by friction of the tyre with the road (and suspension and diff at the extreme), but the car will fly off the road if the limits of friction are exceeded--see many road accidents for details. For a motorbike or bicycle, it's also reliant upon friction, but the rider can lean into the bend as well. (There's also the gyroscopic effect of the wheels pulling you back to the vertical). Roads can (and are) also engineered to have a camber and cant appropriate to the expected speed of the road, e.g. motorways, sliproads, race tracks. As are railways. The physics should be fairly intuitive--just go out and ride a bike fast around a bend while keeping it perfectly straight. You'll fly off the road and/or fall off the bike! It's totally natural to lean into a curve. You aren't changing direction or turning, you are simply moving the centre of gravity inward away from the vertical proportionally to the force pulling you the other way, cancelling out the forces to keep you in a stable position.
While on the railway this is good for passenger comfort, the real win is to go around bends faster. If you didn't lean into the bend, the train would fly off the track, so it's raising the maximum safe speed for a given section of track from its engineered limit for non-tilting trains to a higher speed for tilting trains. Note that the cant of the track is also preventing the track itself from sliding out under the force of several hundred tons of train flying around a tight curve. It can happen when e.g. the design speed limit is exceeded. The main risk I can see is if the hydraulics fail when encountering a sharp curve at high speed, though I'm sure there are systems in place to cope with that to e.g. brake appropriately. Other than that, I'm not sure what you mean by "unsafe" track--it's safe within calculated limits, which depend upon exactly how that section is built, how steep the gradients are, how sharp the curves and can't angles are, etc. Other than natural disasters, erosion, poor construction and maintenance, I'm not sure how it would become "unsafe"; some of these are unavoidable, and the rest mitigated through regular inspection and maintenance.
Google can answer your question easily enough. E.g.
http://www.batesville.k12.in.us/physics/phynet/mechanics/circular%20motion/an_unbanked_turn.htm [k12.in.us]
http://www.batesville.k12.in.us/physics/phynet/mechanics/circular%20motion/banked_no_friction.htm [k12.in.us]
http://www.batesville.k12.in.us/physics/phynet/mechanics/circular%20motion/banked_with_friction.htm [k12.in.us]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Nuke on Thursday December 31 2015, @04:29PM
Runaway1956 wrote :-
It looks to me like some engineers missed some very basic physics in their first years of college. They will gain nothing using hydraulics to make a vehicle "lean like a motorcycle".
That must include me then. I was very close to the APT project and knew many of the project engineers personally, and I can assure you that there were some brilliant people. Everything was covered from fundamental studies of wheel-rail interaction to [then] new methods of construction.
You are right in saying that tilt does not help keeping the train on the rails (to the first order at least). The main reason for it is passenger comfort. But you cannot keep increasing the cant [railway term for "banking"] instead because there is a statutory limit of 5" (AFAIR). That comes partly from the consideration that a train might need to make a signal stop on the curve and you don't want people and their dinners falling inwards, partly because the Civil Engineers would find it difficult to maintain the track with more cant (think of track maintenance machinery), and partly because one of the design requirements of the APT (unlike the French TGV for example) was that it should use track shared with slower trains that needed less cant.
As for staying on the rails, the tilting was only the most visible high-tech feature of the APT and really nothing to do with it, as I said. For "track-holding" (not a railway term BTW) the APT had some very clever suspension design that (except on the sharpest curves) avoided the flange-to-rail contact which could result in the flange climbing over the rail, effectively steering the wheels down the track without "touching the sides", so to speak.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Friday January 01 2016, @03:47AM
You missed an important detail about how a motorcycle turns. You do in fact turn a motorcycle by "turning the handlebars". However, you turn it by turning the handlebars in the opposite direction that you want to turn. This process is called countersteering. [wikipedia.org]
As an experienced motorcyclist, I have lots of practice using it. Even though the wikipedia mentions using the handlebars to initiate the bank and turn, it also works mid turn. If I find I need to turn even harder, I keep countersteering to get the bank I need. Similarly, when I am exiting the turn, turning the handlebars in the opposite ("right") direction straightens me up and takes me out of the turn.
In the Motorcycle Safety Foundation experienced riders course, our instructor demonstrated it in an avoidance manoeuvre. While riding a 1987 Honda Goldwing at about 30mph (handles like a 1973 Buick but feels heavier), he managed to drag the footpegs on both sides with countersteering, while shifting his line about 10 feet to the left, all within a span of about a second. There are lots of riders on sport bikes that couldn't do that.
If you ride a motorcycle, try it. You would be amazed at how much more effectively you and turn a bike. It works on bicycles too but is less obvious at low speeds.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 01 2016, @11:03AM
I was shooting for some kind of brevity when I wrote that post. I'll be honest with you - starting in the early seventies, I just rode. Have you watched the movie, "Why we ride"? The movie very specifically points out that when we learn to ride, we learn from buddies and friends who probably learned bad habits from their buddies and friends. That was me. I couldn't have explained counter steering if my life depended on it. Nobody could. We just rode.
Many years later, I'm a dad, and I hadn't been on a bike in 18 years or more. My youngest son asks me about getting a motorcycle. I advised him to NOT get a motorcycle - instead get himself a minibike or a small dirt bike, and to wear it out right here on the property and on our neighbor's property. I was quite specific that he should NOT get a road legal bike until he had worked himself up to it in stages. The boy took my advice, and along the way, he started googling for advice, explanations, and physics. Not to mention, he used the internet to figure out how to fix the bikes everytime he wrecked one or had mechanical problems.
The kid got me to reading, and today, I actually understand what I'm doing, how and why it works. Yeah, I'm a better rider for all of the reading.
Needless to say, when I came home and found a Kawasaki 750 parked beside the porch, I couldn't stand it any longer, and got myself a bike.
Still to this day, I've not taken a motorcycling course, but I've read David L. Hough, Keith Code, and more. The kid and I have practiced a lot of stuff together, and we share stories of our experiences.
Understanding the physics makes you a much better rider.
If you've not watched it, I highly recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Ride-Kenny-Roberts/dp/B00IBBMM2O/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1451646168&sr=1-1&keywords=why+we+ride [amazon.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by aliks on Thursday December 31 2015, @06:43PM
Fraid I get motion sickness on a playground swing.
Last year when I got on a train from London to the Midlands for the first time in ages, the Pendolino tilting came as an unpleasant shock. Like reading a book in the back of a car. Although I applaud the technology innovation, and use of mass transport, it just rules it out for me.
To err is human, to comment divine
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @07:52PM
The APT failed, and a temporary solution was needed to address the fact old trains still needed replacing.
So the HST was developed. It is quite possibly the best British train ever built. Still in use today. No tilting, but can do 125 mph/200 kmh purely on diesel power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @08:11PM
Buy pendular models from Talgo [wikipedia.org]. It works, 30 years of experience.