BR 1991 Sleeper Route

[jfollows]

In late 1978 I caught the train at around 04.00 from Kings Cross to Leeds; I was going, with bicycle, to look at the vacancy at Blea Moor. It only had a couple of passenger coaches as it was mostly parcels and newspaper traffic: it stopped at a few places like Biggleswade or Sandy to drop off packages of newspapers. It was all quiet until South Elmsall, when there was a rush of passengers, which finally put an end to my attempts to sleep.

1L01 D385 04:05 King's Cross to Leeds, not a sleeper as you say, but you'd have been attempting to sleep on it.
Mail MX and timed (all days) to a maximum speed of 70mph
Calling at:

• Stevenage 04cN38
• Hitchin 04:44-04:50
• Sandy 05cN06
• Peterborough 05:38.5-05:46.5
• Grantham 06:19.5-06:29.5
• Newark 06:45.5-06:50.5
• Retford 07:10.5-07:20.5
• Doncaster 07:49-08:06
• South Elmsall 08b18.5
• Wakefield Westgate 08:32-08:34
• Leeds 08:54

c - arrives 2 minutes earlier
N - stop not advertised
b - arrives 1.5 minutes earlier

 

[Magdalia]

if I recall, correctly, a single sleeper carriage in a train made up primarily of newspaper vans. I caught it occasionally (using the seated accomodation). c1980 it left Kings Cross at 0005, and I would leave the train at Retford about 4am to make a connection for Lincoln (using the overnight Manchester - Grimsby via Lincoln newspaper train), so it probably reached Leeds at a fairly civilised hour.

You are muddling different trains. The 0005 departure went to Newcastle, as stated above the Leeds train departed at 0110 and arrived Leeds at 0505.

By the time the train reached Retford it was quite a different beast, as many vans had been detached, and others added, en route.

The 0110 Leeds only detached. It started out from Kings Cross load 11 but beyond Peterborough it was a TSO, a sleeper and 3 vans.

At that time the Aberdeen sleeper was due off Kings Cross at 2359.

Again you are muddling different trains. The other train would have been the Night Scotsman to Edinburgh which departed at 2355. The Aberdeen sleepers departed at 2000 and 2215.

 

[Harpo]

An extra problem with Saturday night trains was that engineering works often took place overnight. Either taking the possessions had to be delayed or they had to be given up for a period, which meant less work was done, or Single Line Working had to be brought in, which was costly in staff and a headache for roster clerks.

Back in BR days there was a curious phenomenon called diversions which have diminished on daytime operations but still happen on the sleeper operations on the GWR and WCML.

Among it's many variations, The Saturday night Glasgow - Bristol had short WTT periods of using Bletchley - Oxford in the 80s as well as all the usual suspects of Stourbridge, Cannock, Manchester etc..

 

[Magdalia]

Back in BR days there was a curious phenomenon called diversions which have diminished on daytime operations but still happen on the sleeper operations on the GWR and WCML.

The ECML diverted on Saturday night and Sunday daytime too. There was about one hour extra in the timings of sleepers and other overnight trains to allow for diversions via Cambridge or Lincoln, but not both.

 

[The exile]

Thanks for posting those observations. Any idea what the timings were for the service in '87?

Can look later!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Oct 2024 ==

Among it's many variations, The Saturday night Glasgow - Bristol had short WTT periods of using Bletchley - Oxford in the 80s as well as all the usual suspects of Stourbridge, Cannock, Manchester etc..

Never had that one, but I do remember pitching up at Temple Meads late-ish on a Sunday morning after a long slow crawl via Solihull and Oxford. This was after a layover of about an hour at New Street during which Iwas delighted to discover the station buffet was open and less delighted to discover that other than tea and coffee, their only hot offering was minestrone soup!

 

[Shrop]

1985-86 timetable attached. I don’t have 1987’s timetable.

Thanks for posting that. I remember using that northbound sleeper (Bristol-Edinburgh) two or three times on an ALR just a couple of years earlier, it was always good to watch the banking loco(s) on the Lickey before bedding down for the night - in a compartment coach if we were lucky, which was just a good as paying for a sleeping berth and a whole lot less expensive!

What strikes me now though, is just how late the southbound sleeper was. The northbound sleeper arrived into Edinburgh at 05.40, giving plenty of opportunity to catch onward trains to Aberdeen/Inverness etc and still arrive with plenty of the day left, but I see that the southbound train (which I didn't use) didn't arrive into Bristol until 08.49. This would have meant that people travelling on to the West Country would have been well into the next day by the time they arrived at their destinations!