West Coast HSTs?

[30mog]

Back in about 1991. I attended a Rugby League game at Gilford Park, Carlisle.

I am sure that during this visit. I noticed HSTs in the nearby railway yard. And/or, HSTs passing nearby in service. At the time, I had been working in the motor industry a few years. Showing any apparent interest in trains would have provoked reprisals from my employers. So for this period I knew little of what happened on the railways.

Put quite simply. Have HSTs ever worked the West Coast Mainline? In particular Crewe to Carlisle?

I can recall travelling on an HST the short distance from Banbury to Oxford in about 1992. In common with services today operated by Cross Country. This HST could have originated in the north west.

 

[rebmcr]

You would have seen Class 86 + Mk 3s in Intercity Swallow livery, similar to the HSTs at the time.

 

[sprinterguy]

You would have seen Class 86 + Mk 3s in Intercity Swallow livery, similar to the HSTs at the time.

Crosscountry used HSTs on services up the West Coast main line from Birmingham that originated in the South West, such as the "Devon Scot" and "Cornish Scot" to Aberdeen and Edinburgh respectively from Plymouth.

The majority of class 86s on passenger services as far North as Carlisle in the nineties would have been those used on Crosscountry services, and hence were paired with mark 2 carriages: The Anglo-scottish West Coast services, which utilised mark 3s, were diagrammed primarily for class 87s (Not to say that 86s didn't turn up, but West Coast had mark 2s as well that they could be paired with).

 

[The Planner]

The old Blackpool Birmingham International train used to be an HST.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

There was certainly an HST XC service Reading-Crewe-Scotland in 1997-ish.
I think that would have been the Dorset Scot (Brighton trains were always loco-hauled).
HSTs were also used Euston-Holyhead/Blackpool (and to Manchester after the Blackpools were axed) before Pendolinos arrived.

 

[AJP62]

I have also caught an HST from Manchester Piccadilly to Carlisle, in fact I thing it started back in Macclesfield. Went via Chat Moss and Wigan and was going on to Edinburgh I think. It was early out of Manchester, around 7am, so may well have then formed a service to the South West.

 

[Manchester77]

HSTs were used on Euston - North Wales services from 1991 until voyager-isation. See here: http://www.penmorfa.com/Archive/eighteen.htm