Product Features and Details
4-piece set FS ETR 401 high-speed train set, Era IV
“Rapido 871/872 Rome-Ancona”,
Updated windows and headlights
• Original-style side windows on all carriages
• Original-style bogies without shock absorbers
• New reproduction of the wheel wing
• Type 52 pantographs with latest generation contact strip
• New electrical system with independent controls for white and red headlights, third light, and interior lighting of the cabins and passenger compartments
“It looks like a toy, it seems to be looking at you as it rocks from right to left and back”: This is how the FIAT Y0160 model, the “mobile laboratory” in which the revolutionary variable geometry technology was tested,
a purely Italian invention in response to the need to control the travel speed, was presented in an FS newsreel from
1971 to increase performance even on the winding traditional routes. This technology was fully implemented with the four-car electric multiple unit prototype ETR 401, the construction of which was completed in 1976, making it the first train with variable-height running gear in commercial use worldwide. It was immediately christened "Pendolino" and, after a short test phase, assigned to the Roma San Lorenzo depot and entered regular service in July of the same year on the Rome-Ancona line, whose profile allowed it to fully exploit its dynamic characteristics, although it could also reach top speeds of up to 250 km/h. This operation, which was extended to Rimini in 1979, lasted until 1982, when the ETR 401 was taken out of service. Some questionable decisions regarding the development of the service and the FS network limited the potential of these technologies for several years, and it was only with the order in 1985 for the future ETR 450 trains, which were directly derived from the ETR 401 and entered service in 1988, that active variable geometry came back into fashion and began to spread abroad.
