Just going back to last night's late departure from Inverness, I've had a different story from a regular who heard it from the crew.
There's no doubt that the train departed minus one First Class vehicle, in other words the sleepers were C-D-E-F-G, B missing.
It appears that 'B' arrived on Saturday morning with a fault, whether or not this was connected with the massive late running I don't know. Then there seemed to be no capacity to address this problem until Sunday afternoon by which time they were running out of time. The coach was removed from the formation at the last minute, hence the late arrival in the platform. So no broken rail and no problem with 'overhead wires', but it doesn't explain why CS were lining up a road alternative, and it should mean that a broken First Class mk3 sleeper coach has been sat at Inverness all day today? That's as much as I know, others may be able to tell us more.
Changing the subject to something more long lasting, and maybe I've missed an earlier post on this, apologies if so.
From tonight they're doing away with First and Standard sleeper coaches, at least on the Inverness section of the Highlander. It's going over to six composites which are approximately 2/3 First and 1/3 Standard - I've looked online and the plans are there. Apparently this is closer to the layout of the new trains. No locked out compartments however, so perhaps this was an urban myth.