Another video in italian from the builder of the first "pendolino" tilting train (1988) [video=youtube;vaiX6gZVoE4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaiX6gZVoE4[/video] the blue one you see in the video is the prototype which was built 10 years before The builder of these trains was the railroad division of FIAT (yes, the auto manufacturer) which was sold to alstom some years ago and still produces tilting trains derived from these. The tilting system derived from gyros and some accelerometers the infos for the computer to correctly tilt the body of the train; unlike some earlier tentatives in england and france which were not "liked" by the travelers since the train tilted all together. This one instead (you can see in the video) tilts car by car. Unfortunately the 450 do not use anymore the tilting due to the manufacturer of the gyros (british) going out of business some years ago. more modern version 460, 485, and the latest 600/610 use laser gyros and do not have this problem, you can recognize the older 450 and 401 (the blue one) from the front which is very "airplane like", the others have ICE style front. What gives you a pendolino? 25% more speed on curves which is really precious in Italy as it is full of mountains and many mainlines still use the same right of way of the late 800s some pictures from trainzitalia fotos site 401, the prototype - 450 you see in the video 460 / 485 (the latter 3kv and 25 kv) 600/610 (the latter also sold to switzerland) the ETR 500 are NOT pendolini as they are not tilting trains even if in italy they are often referred as such ciao ciao
Just an update, all 450s have been retired, except a portion of train #3 (6 cars out if 9) which will be part of ITA RR (FS) historic excursion fleet. (the tilting feature is not working anyway)
The 401 did extensive test in Germany, which led to DB order some tilting DMU (Br 610) from Siemens with FIAT tilting technology. Many tilting trains in Europe (including UK) use FIAT derived technology even if not built by FIAT/Alstom, all of them are electrics, except some german DMU (ICE-T diesel). That is probably why they did not get much success, as fitting adequate diesels (powerful) in a tilting train is still quite a challenge (the German DMU are for regional traffic, the ICE diesel is from late 2000 and had its own share of issues), you can imagine in the 70/80s.
