Motorail Service???

[Lawman]

Folks, looking for some information on the old BR Motorail Service.

Im interested to know if any fellow forum users had ever worked on that service and also their opinions on it!

Also im keen to know the formation of the trains, ie.. how many seated carriages, car carriages, was their a First Class lounge etc...

Could anyone tell me the layout at the station in regards to vehicles conveyed on the train.. ie did staff drive the cars or was it owner driver!

Would there be any chance this service would return?

Any information would be greatly appriciated...

 

[OMGitsDAVE]

May I refer you to this thread;

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=35953

Hope that helps!

 

[Lawman]

May I refer you to this thread;

http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=35953

Hope that helps!

Thanks big chap.. thats ideal!!

 

[AJP62]

The daytime London (Olympia) to Carlisle/Perth was usually about 6 Mk 1 first corridors, one being a brake first, and around 10 car flats with three dropped off at Carlisle. I think the daytime London to Newton Abbott/St Austell one were similar from photos of that time. These two were exclusive for Motorail passengers. The shortlived Stirling - Inverness attached to a normal scheduled train from Glasgow.

Most of the others ran overnight so were more of a mystery unless you saw them at one end of their run.

 

[The Barlow Boy]

The Penzance sleeper from Padders always had a pair of GUVs tacked on the rear as did the (pre-HST) 08.30 to Plymouth. The cars were loaded via hydraulic ramps that were at the lawn end on platforms 1 and 2. During the summer a Saturday day train ran to Penzance. The cars were loaded on to car flats (usually converted mark one coach chassis with wooden decking) passengers travelling on first or second class coaches as appropriate. I think that this ran until the late 1980s. One year a crassly stupid change was made in that the cars were put on one train and taken to St. Austell and the passengers travelled on a normal train to rejoin their pride and joy there. Post privatization, First resurrected the Saturday day motorail service to Penzance. Cars and passengers on the same train and all first class accomodation with the run of the lounge at Padders. The cost was £72 for car and driver and whatever ticket that could be got for anyone else. As per B.R. a 50% discount was offered to staff. It was a winner. The only thing that they forgot to do was advertise it! I discovered it in a six line column in the "Torygraph". Word soon got around and it was consistently booked at 100% capacity. So the fools put the price up and within three years it had risen to £136. And that, to-gether with the widening and improvements to the A30 was the end of that.

 

[LexyBoy]

The cost was £72 for car and driver and whatever ticket that could be got for anyone else.

I must say I was really amazed when I found out a while ago that Motorail was still running into the 2000s. With this thread I was wondering what the cost was - and it's hardly surprising that it didn't last! Even if they get 10 cars on each vehicle it's going to cost far more than the revenue from taking cars. And of course any more expensive and it's not competitive with renting a car down there.

IIRC they run trains with cars and (mainly) lorries in Sweden, where I would think the driving conditions are rather harder than here.

 

[gordonthemoron]

whenever I take the night train from Munich to Berlin or Hamburg, there are always cars and motorcycles on the car transporters attached to the back of the train

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Now, I am being a bit cheeky here but I have seen bicycles and pushchairs ( no, not with the baby still strapped in! ) being conveyed on the platform wagon that is attached to the outer end of the Hythe Pier train, so I am very, very, tempted to nominate it as the sole remaining Motorail service in the UK...