A beautiful run-through on a beautiful train! Scotrail really got it right refurbishing these classic trains inside and out for one of the prestige Scottish services.
So glad Scotrail haven't ruined the Mk3 coaches with concrete seats. I'm envious. The poor old HST down here in the SouthWest got refurbished with terrible hard seating, it's a crime against such fine coaches.
The Inter City 125 was a game changer for British Rail when introduced during the mid to late 70s. Originally they were a stop gap until the APT was brought into service, but the APT never got off the ground, and the Inter City 125 became the main stay of services on non electrified routes. As an example one of my regular journeys, York to London, was half an hour quicker with the introduction of the 125. 2h 20 - 30m down to 1h 50m to 2h depending on stops. The fact that they are still in front line service after over 40 years shows that the design was good. There were teething troubles, but these were ironed out in the first few years. The compartment behind the engine was originally used for parcels and bulky luggage, and used by the guard for the first few years, but was I gather noisy. In my opinion the Mk3 is the best riding carriage in the UK, even on indifferent track, the Mk4s that followed were significantly poorer.
Did you notice the notices officially applied on the not for public use doors of each ScotRail coach? One said - Stay out. On board whisky distillery Another - Stay out. Bagpipe practice room
Nice touch of humour :D I also noticed that some inscriptions were translated to Scottish Gaelic, which is a very nice detail in my opinion. _ScotRail - Rèile Na h-Alba_ sounds much more fascinating
It is SUCH A SHAME that the UK railways are SO INSANELY EXPENSIVE to use - any class anywhere. My full family just loves trains, but we are only using buses OR OUR OWN CARS! Such a shame. But thank you for the excellent video! Appreciated.
The Storage area in the Power Cars was originally for the Guard (US=Conductor), with storage for Baggage and Parcels. Due to the Noise from the Prime Movers (Engines) the Guards complained, and eventually a Trailer, Guard, Second (TGS) Coach was added to the end of the consist and the Guard's Compartment went mostly unused. If you look at the first three original Liveries on the Class 43 Power Cars the Gray Window Band started at the Guard's Compartment, indicating Occupied Space, very clever design if you ask me.
How very nice of them to align the seats with the windows. Some rail companies do really want to screw people up with windowless seats (looking at you, DB).
The bike storage is being upgraded, some sets have 6 now, with the other 4 being behind the 2 hanging racks. The cafe bar was closed at covid, and most staff let go, seemingly being relaunched in 23, the space behind the cabs can't be used, for now, due to the fire suppressant system.
It's not due to the fire suppressant system - they've had that system for many years now. The area can be used for luggage easily, the reason it isn't is because when they were introduced, nobody wanted liability for the loading or unloading (Station side or train crew side).
I think the big storage areas would originally have been used to transport parcels and other goods, as well as passenger luggage. LNER used to check bags in here on busy trains.
I can confirm that: when I travelled on a Virgin Train HST from King's Cross to Edinburgh in 2016 our luggage was taken on the platform in London, put a sticker on it with our destination and we found it unloaded on the platform in Edinburgh. The train was bound to Aberdeen.
They were designed originally as guard compartments (a place for the conductor to stay) however it was extremely loud and uncomfortable so it got used as storage etc.
Love the Edinburgh to Aberdeen line, and the HST trains owned by Scotrail. 5:27 That's so Scotland for you when it comes to the weather, nice weather and then a wee bit of rain😂
Thank You for the beautiful video. The HST inter7city trains were configured with 4 carriages, but recently they have proven to be popular that Scotrail introduced 5 carriages on some trains. this year I boarded a 4 carriage HST from Perth to Glasgow and it was choc-a bloc. so a 5 carriage was definitely required.
it was always intended to lengthen 17 or the 26 (now 25) sets to 5 car, however there have been many faults reported with the 5th coach due to them being refurbed at a different time, so scotrail are thinking of scrapping the 5th coach in all sets
Yeah hopefully they go to five- Luckily I was there in covid so a lot of the trains were pretty empty. Except when they ran a 170 instead or a 158 where it should have been a 170. When I was in the England and Wales this summer trains were stuffed.
Nice video. Scotland, by rail is great. Do consider exploring Wales. My tip is to buy a Ffestiniog Round Robin ticket. Start in Shrewsbury. The ticket allows you to take a long circular route that combines coast, countryside and even a steam train ride. It's an amazing journey and a great rail day out.
Back in the '90s I used to regularly travel in these from Paddington to Reading. The thrum of the Valenta V12s would fill Paddington to the point that you just got used to it as a background sound. I was at Paddington last year for the first time since then and it was eerily quiet without them. Certainly miss the old V12s screaming their turbos when they left the station. They got a lot quieter when the engines were replaced with MTUs.
I've only been on these trains a couple of times but I did not think they were from the 70s! I don't know why they vary the number of carriages, but I know that Scotrail's twitter team are really good, and if you tweet them they'll probably try to find out if they don't already know! The most bike-friendly service in Scotland is the Glasgow - Oban train which often has a special bike carriage attached along with some premium seating. Half the carriage is just bike racks, and it also has fantastic custom livery too. It's also a really good journey to do, and it's usually two trains in one with the other half going up to Fort William and Mallaig. They used to make everyone disembark for coupling and decoupling the trains but they don't bother anymore. Also, fun fact, but as of this year Scotland now has 8 cities...so I wonder if they'll have to do a rebrand.
I always wondered were they ran those converted 153's. Been on the glasgow to mallaig but didn't notice or they didn't have it that day (it was back in covid). What city got added?
Smooth, fast ride. Beautiful scenery and impressive bridges. Perhaps the different train lengths is anticipated passengers Thanks Thibault for a great video😀💚
I will admit that the HST has a certain charm to it. But at the same time, far more of the UK rail network should have been electrified long before now, including probably this line.
I agree with your point about electrification. Thankfully Scotland is getting on with it, with all the Glasgow-Edinburgh routes now done, as well as the lines to Stirling, Dunblane and Alloa, and Glasgow to East Kilbride is currently in progress.
A superb journey on a magnificent train. The first class area is very much as created by GWR with new carpet and the cafe area which never seems to be in use. Just to prove that the Scots have a sense of humour one door was marked “Keep Out. Onboard Whisky distillery” and another “Stay Out. Bagpipe Practice Room”. There may well be others.
Thank you for an excellent video. The Scotrail HSTs have been refurbished to a very high standard. Only a few have 5 cars, with most of the fleet having just 4. All HSTs running in the U.K which includes Cross Country Trains and GWR have sliding entrance doors controlled by the Guard. It is unfortunate that the Scottish Government has ordered Scotrail not to serve alcohol on its trains, though some trolley service appears on certain trains. It is well worth laying the. 1st Class upgrade too ! Many thanks.
Great video!!! I love Scotland and the HST’s and what Scotrail have done with them! Any plans to come across the channel to Ireland soon??? We have some great train to review!
They are expensive to maintain, and have poor availability. ScotRail built a new maintenance depot for them near where I live (Lenzie), presumably because the existing depots couldn't cope. I'm making the most of them while they are still around as they are a joy to ride on. Better, now that they have six bike spaces instead of two (long story behind that).
@@Clivestravelandtrains i doubt theyre expensive to maintain, spare parts are abundent and theyre very simple and easy things to maintain. theres really no excuse for them having poor availability, the GWR HSTs were phenominally reliable. i presume its due to lack of expertise in maintaining them up in scotland whereas all the GWR depots had 40 years of experience in maintaining them. still pretty poor though, its not like HSTs are new to most of the lines theyre serving in scotland
@@Trainman10715 People in England blaming people in Scotland for having a lack of expertise is very common unfortunately. It's not so much the spare parts, it's the labour cost of maintenance, plus downtime. Older trains - like older cars - need more maintencance. There's a lot of comment about this on the rail foum website. I normally run my car for 10 years - I know from experience that after that time it is more often off the road and costing me more to maintain. That's normal with the ageing process. Yesterday I was at Lenzie station watching trains, and two Glasgow-Aberdeen runs normally HST were covered by Turbostars. If you watch my film on here about Dalnaspidal you will see me express disappointment at seeing only one HST during a day spent in that area.
@@Clivestravelandtrains its got naught to do with whos scottish and whos english and everything to do with the fact that the GWR depots had 40+ years of expirience with them and therefore will have more expertise in maintaining them than the scottrail depots as a matter of fact, its the only explanation as to why trains that were phenominally reliable with GWR are now underperforming with a differnt operator. some people will try to make a political issue out of everything, its very common unfortunatly the labour and cost of maintainence were lower with with GWRs hsts than their current IETs, so theres no reason that the maitainence and labour be any more expensive in scotland, theyre very reliable machines when used properly. their downtime was also very small with GWR, their powercars were doing something like 13000 miles between major failures in 2019, compare that the the 2500 miles between failures that the new northern class 195s were getting in 2019. theres no reason the HSTs should do any less miles between breakdowns in scotland. cars and trains are not comparible, normaly with trains (so long as spare parts are still abundant) older trains tend to be cheaper and easier to maintain than newer ones and they end up being cheaper to operate, this is due to a number of reasons. this is also why its taken so long to withdraw a lot of BR kit, its also why BR used trains for 40 years before replacing them, back before leasing was a thing and they owned all their trains it was cheaper to keep old trains going than to buy new. rail forum sites aught to know this really, BR era trains with their good build quality, simplicity, and lack of digital stuff to go wrong, only become expensive to maintain once pools of spares run dry cars are different as theyre only really designed to last around 5 years (or till whenever the warranty runs out) as that forces you to buy a new car so its in the manufacturers best interest. all the BR trains however were designed and built to stringent BR specifications and so they were build with BRs best interests in mind (a lot of BR kit was outright built by BR too) and BRs best interest were to build them to last, not for them to only last for a few years like cars. admitadly these standards have waivered a bit with post privatization trains and, with leasing, they are now moving to a model more similar to cars where theyre built to the manufacturers specs, so of course they will be designed to go obscolete after a certain anount of time, about 20 years, as its in the manufactures best interests. it is a shame that scotrail arent taking care of their HSTs, if they took care of them like GWR did/are still currently doing then they wouldnt have a problem. while the HSTs are reliable and resiliant things and can take quite a hammering before showing problems, they will still require some degree of care given to them. it is also possible that the modifcations they recieved before being introduced by scottrail were bodged and dont work properly, again its a shame to ruin what was very reliable kit before
I think 💭 that ABERDEEN is such a *CRIMINALLY underrated* city 🏙️ in Scotland 🏴-it’s just plain SWEET and BEAUTIFUL 🤩 left, right and center. I think 💭 it deserves to be as big as MANCHESTER or even *LONDON.*
Love your videos! I'm hoping to take Caledonian sleeper soon. (BTW I think you mixed up the currency conversion in this video £59 is definitely not €51)
Great video, thanks. Love a HST set, shame about losing the slam doors but I guess they just weren’t compatible with DDA requirements. With regards to turning on the tap in the loo of the MK3, the button used to be located on the floor, maybe that’s still the case?
Scotrail doesn't have the newest stock, apart from the Hitachi 385's that run Edinburgh-Glasgow, but most of them were refurbished well and quite comfortable compared to some of the other British trains. The scenery is great to. They were also pretty reliable in my experience, except for the strikes. I'm interested to see how they do in the coming years.
I rode these a few times immediately before the refurbishment - and I can tell you, it's amazing what they've done with them! The views at golden hour are beautiful too.
Enjoyed to ride. Ridden that line quite a few times. Have friends in Tayport. We get off either in Dundee or Leuchars. Playing this video in Melbourne Australia.
Enjoyable video. Please note that the maximum line speed in general on Scotrail is 100 mph (160 km/h). I understood the Inter7City HSTs are limited in general to 100 mph regardless of line speed due to having only 4 cars (which limits the available brake force) 2:25, I guess that this may be relaxed for 5 cars where line speed allows, I'm not sure. The main refurbishments for Inter7City were the slam doors being retofitted to Sliding type and the original `dump on the tracks' toilets being replaced by modern vacuum operated toilets with effluent retention tanks (whch the Australian XPT, a relative of the IC125 (power cars based on the Class 43), had from day one btw).
This reportage awakens wistful travel memories of an elderly continental European: 1976, London-Cambridge trip, old coaches. Some had separate luggage compartments. My suitcase with material for a 3month-stay, unsuspectingly placed there, was not stolen. (Also remembered from that trip: In Victoria Station I had to make a phone call to announce my arrival; only in the 4th cabin did I get through. In the others the whole apparatus had been torn out, the cable ripped out, the coin inlet screwed up or the microphone unscrewed.) 1979, Southend-London commuter train after a long flight: The train had barely started when I urgently needed to urinate. Ancient compartment carriages - I was locked in my compartment. Finally, alone in the compartment, I had no choice but to open the door and to pee out of the moving train. Only afterwards did I spot the power rail on the side... 1986, journey Bath-London, for the first (and so far only) time in the HST. This time our luggage (including all photos of our multi-week bike trip) was stolen from the luggage bays. ... and now I see that these trains are still in service and, after refurbishment, up to date. The then struggling British industry was still capable of first-class products. (However: The Raleigh bike I then bought out of respect for it‘s reputation quickly turned out to be an unstable pile of rust).
The storage compartment was included because of derailments, because in that case the lighter cab car would detail first and pretty significantly in comparison to other cars. As such it was left empty in order to prevent deaths
The HST's are great trains, it's a shame you never got to ride the East Midlands Rail HST's before they were taken out of service, they were the only ones to still have the original 1970's seating, which oddly was actually far far nicer than the seating on most of the 2000's era refurbishments. The 70's seats had huge tick cushions and were very comfortable and had much bigger seat pitches and tray tables. Original SNCF Corail carriages always reminded me of the East Mids HSTs, it felt like both had the same approach of putting passenger comfort first. Unfortunately the refurbs most operators have done on HST's seemed more interested in just squeezing in an extra 4 or 5 rows of seats, and the less said about the terrible seats on the new class 800's the better!
I rode a class 800 of GWR from London to Bristol last week for the first time, and oh my goodness... The worst seat I've ever been in, by far! I couldn't even find a comfortable position to take a nap despite being exhausted at the time. Even local city buses have way better seats than those infamous 800s! Thankfully these trains are fast and the ride was very short.
I learned recently that the Firth of Forth bridge was built excessively strong after the previous bridge, designed by a well respected engineer, had a catastrophic collapse when a train went over it, causing many deaths.
@@AML2000 Yes I realized that after I wrote that. The Forth bridge was built after the Tay Bridge collapse. The nearby Tay bridge was a girder bridge. As a result it was decided to redesign the Forth bridge as a super strong cantilever bridge.
The WRL--Wairarapa Line-- runs 100km from Wellington,, through the built up 2 km wide Hutt Valley, climb up to the 8.5 km Rimutaka Tunnel and down again to the Wairarapa Plain and on to Masterton town.--- 3 business trains each morning & evening,, with a consist of 6--9 beautifully refurbished Mk 2 ex BR stock. They run very smoothly,, but north of the tunnel where speeds get back to.... max 80 km/hr the state of the single track adds a little rustic roughness in patches. The SE carriages have excellent lighting on two level plus personal lighting, floor level power points for every passenger, Tables !! and now re upholstered in attractive bright blue fabric, not true moquette.The 100 km takes 95 mins if on not slowed by track work so you have time to relax and enjoy the lovely country landscape north of the tunnel. Now on 3'6" gauge it does the job perfectly...but No Coffee Machine... I thought 22$ ( 11 pounds) was bad enough for 100 km.... but a real steal compared with the price you paid for much the same level of comfort. Merci beaucoup de votre reportage:-)
9:27 think it's for different services, with the 5 coach ones running the longer services. (Inherited fleet was 54 powercars + 121 coaches, originally 17x 5 coach + 9x 4 coach, now theres only 8 four coach ones due to the Stonehaven derailment)
It's not so much for longer services, the sets work primarily the hourly Edinburgh / Glasgow - Aberdeen services, and the less frequent Edinburgh / Glasgow - Inverness services. Oh, and some Aberdeen - Inverness services. The five car sets are generally kept to Edinburgh / Glasgow to Aberdeen, I don't think any are diagrammed to Inverness.
The original standard configuration on the HST was eight cars -- five second, a buffet/diner, and two first. I think the compartment in the locomotive was originally for things like express parcels but it would be a perfect bike space today.
It was 7 or 8 coaches (depending on region) and originally they had two buffets. Compartments in the powercars were for the guard before the TGS (2nd class coach with a guard space) was made due to noise complaints
@@Danse_Macabre_125 With a total of 117 HST-specific buffet and kitchen cars of various kinds and 608 HST-specific trailer firsts and seconds in BR's order by the time the HST delivery was complete, that would have been highly unlikely. Certainly the ECML services I used in and out of Leeds were 2F, 1 buffet, 5S or similar. But I should point out, I never used the HST prior to the mid 1980s, and in looking up consists in response to your comment it appears that the use of both a kitchen and a buffet car was quite common early on but rare indeed after the mid 1980s.
Excellent video as always. I haven't ridden a Scotrail HST yet. We've done the journey between Waverley and Broughty Ferry (my partner's home town, first station after Dundee) a couple of times but on the far less comfortable three-car Class 170 multiple units. I'd certainly much rather do the Edinburgh-Aberdeen on an HST than an LNER Azuma.
I took the azuma first class to aberdeen and it was the worst train journey ever ...i took std class HST Scotrail home and it was better than azuma 1st class ...the ride quality on the HST mk3 seta are amazing .... and your 4 car and 5 car is purely peak time and off peak time travel ...only thing that lets scotrail hst down is lack of catering .....try the glasgow QS to inverness the scenery is amazing ...or do the journey from glasgow QS to Mallaig (harry potter train route) .... good video matey
GWR has announced that they are retiring its HSTs by the end of this year (2023). CrossCountry is only using its HSTs for a limited number of services between Plymouth and Leeds or Plymouth and Edinburgh. Once GWR ends HST operations, CrossCountry may well lose access to HST maintenance facilities at GWR's Laira depot, so might be forced to retire its HST fleet. ScotRail may well be the only operator still running HSTs after the end of 2023.
A nice video paying proper homage to the queen of the tracks. But don't take 5.5 miles an hour off her world record... Great to know we can still go on another journey on these HST trains if we go to Caledonia and a few other places.
Spent a week in Scotland in the summer using a Spirit of Scotland Rail pass, sadly it was when ScotRail were on a reduced timetable so never got to travel on the HSTs, they were mainly in the depot :(
Even when they did run a full schedule in covid it they weren't that common unless you were going on the highland main line at a peak time. Did you get a chance to go on the West highland line?
@@Blackburnian737 Sadly no, a trip to Oban was scuppered by a cancelled afternoon return train. We did accomplish the main purpose of the visit though - to visit the four heritage lines (Bo'ness, Strathspey, Keith and Caledonian).
@@agent_605 Until May 2022 there was one set used for the Cardenden commuter diagram in the morning, and another in the evening. Dunfermline was still a town then though!
Not surprised, the original Paxman Valenta engine was an absolute screamer under full power! Apart from one museum power car set, all the current HST’s use the more efficient and quieter MTU V16 4000 power units.
The Waverley used two ramps for vehicles to access and egress the station. All manners of vehicles used to drive in to the station, from private cars and taxis and vans for newspaper trains. Mail too even further back. The south ramp shown was the exit ramp, the North ramp (currently being the one used for deliveries to the station), was the entrance. The taxi rank was where the extended platforms 5&6 are now, with the Motorail facility and car park were there at the far end.
@@agent_605 apart from our railway budget being the largest per passenger mile in europe, its a simple case of its too expensive and causes too much hassle to do large scale electrification, we will never have a fully electrified network
Not properly. Great British Railways was proposed to make the system more uniform, but was not a complete nationalisation and now looks set to be binned off. Quite a few individual operators are now publicly owned however, with ScotRail being owned by the Scottish Government since April
Since when has the Class 43 been the most "iconic" train in the UK? I thought the LNER class A4 since one of these units became the "world's fastest steam locomotive"
Of the modern era, it’s certainly true that the Class 43 HST has been the most successful and iconic British designed and built train. And this is from someone who doesn’t really like them that much and thinks they should’ve all gone years ago!
@@Clivestravelandtrains Deltics? Hardly. Whilst they were the epic mainstay of the ECML, they only lasted 20 years in service and were seen basically no where else around the country. The Class 43 HST is, without a doubt, the most iconic train of the post-Steam era in the UK due to its widespread adoption around the country and improving the image of rail travel around the country. And, they’ve lasted getting on 50 years in service (as much as I think they should’ve all gone 10 years ago!)
@@agent_605 You're right - I threw that in hoping for a reaction, which you gladly provided. I love seeing the HST's go through my local station (Lenzie).
