page_title: Gas turbine locomotive
section_title: United Kingdom
hierarchical_section_title: Gas turbine locomotive / Gas turbine-electric / United Kingdom
caption_attribution_description: English: The British Rail APT-E in the RTC sidings between tests in 1972.
context_page_description: A gas turbine locomotive is a type of railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a gas turbine. Several types of gas turbine locomotive have been developed, differing mainly in the means by which mechanical power is conveyed to the driving wheels. A gas turbine train typically consists of two power cars, and one or more intermediate passenger cars.
  A gas turbine offers some advantages over a piston engine. There are few moving parts, decreasing the need for lubrication and potentially reducing maintenance costs, and the power-to-weight ratio is much higher. A turbine of a given power output is also physically smaller than an equally powerful piston engine, so that a locomotive can be extremely powerful without needing to be inordinately large.
  However, a gas turbine's power output and efficiency both drop dramatically with rotational speed, unlike a piston engine, which has a comparatively flat power curve. This makes GTEL systems useful primarily for long-distance high-speed runs.
context_section_description: Two gas turbine locomotives of different design, 18000 and 18100, were ordered by the Great Western Railway (GWR) but completed for the newly nationalised British Railways.
  British Rail 18000 was built by Brown Boveri and delivered in 1949. It was a 1840 kW (2470 hp) GTEL, ordered by the GWR and used for express passenger services.
  British Rail 18100 was built by Metropolitan-Vickers and delivered in 1951. It had an aircraft-type gas turbine of 2.2 MW (3,000 hp). Its maximum speed was 90 miles per hour (140 km/h).
  A third locomotive, the GT3, was constructed in 1961. Although built by English Electric, who had pioneered electric transmission with LMS 10000 locomotives, this used a turbine-mechanical transmission.
  The British Rail APT-E, the prototype of the Advanced Passenger Train, was turbine-powered. Like the French TGV, later models used an alternative electric powertrain. This choice was made because British Leyland, the turbine supplier, ceased production of the model used in the APT-E, having lost interest in gas turbine technology following the 1970s oil crisis.
caption: British Rail APT-E, Derby, UK, 1972
exif: {}