Caledonian Sleeper discussion

[PaxVobiscum]

The seated coach is right at the back of the train in that direction though.

It was at the front on Wednesday - excuse the fuzzy still from a video.

 

[PaxVobiscum]

At FTW you aren’t allowed onto the platform until around 15 mins before departure. A member of staff checks your ticket and directs you to the correct coach as you enter the platform. If you are connecting from the Mallaig train then you’d bypass the ticket check.

When I did my journey the seated coach was almost fully booked, never seen it so full (and I’ve done the journey several times before).

i wonder what they would say if you showed them this:

 

[route101]

Used the Fort William to Glasgow Queen St on seated , i phoned up for a seat reservation , luckily got a facing single seat . Dont fancy that bay of 4s seated coach !

Was busy , i take it that only a certain amount of tickets are sold Fort William through South of Edinburgh , so that its not overbooked on the Aberdeen Portion.

 

[SHerr]

I’ve just got back from Holiday in Inverness and noticed on both arriving and departing that the Sleeper has a class 67 on it. The answers probably already in here somewhere, but to save me reading 262 pages about itchy bedsheets (apologies to anyone affected by them!) - is there a reason why the class 73’s are no longer used?

 

[InOban]

They've never been used on the Inverness portion. Will need two 73/9s and there aren't sufficient while the rest get Dellners fitted.

 

[SHerr]

They've never been used on the Inverness portion. Will need two 73/9s and there aren't sufficient while the rest get Dellners fitted.

Ok thanks that explains it. I thought I’d seen some time ago they had started working in pairs or with a 66. Must have been a test run.

 

[TimboM]

They've never been used on the Inverness portion. Will need two 73/9s and there aren't sufficient while the rest get Dellners fitted.

All 73/9s have Dellners and CAF mods now - keep up at the back!! (73970 last to be done and emerged from Brush in May.)
73968 is at Brush for some unrelated work, the other five are operational in Scotland.
A pair of 73/9s have been used on the Inverness a few times already, too... e.g. https://flic.kr/p/27ZWBHJ and https://flic.kr/p/GnJhRM (not mine)

Ok thanks that explains it. I thought I’d seen some time ago they had started working in pairs or with a 66. Must have been a test run.

The 66 + 73/9 combinations were mostly used in the early days of the 73/9s on the beds when they had alternator issues (now rectified). The 66s were used to provide the traction, but as they don't have ETH the 73/9s were there to provide the power to the stock.

The reason the 67 is still on hire and used on the Inverness is that there's still additional demands on the six 73/9s, including one being full-time at Pomadie on Mk5 shunting/testing duties, plus there's the one in Brush. Back-up Duff 47727 is also currently indisposed at Leicester. Having only 4 diesel locos available for the north of Edinburgh diagrams which require 4 engines per night is a very risky strategy (would be issues as soon as a repair/exam is needed). Hence keeping the 67 on hire provides greater capacity and resilience.

 

[Furrball]

Aberdeen sleeper departure this evening noted as still having seated car locked out of use.

RFO as lounge car so extra seats there at least

 

[Bletchleyite]

No checking when we boarded at Waverley in June, no reservations honoured, just first come first served. Got packed by Glasgow and standing before FW. Squashed into sharing four seater tables not want you want during 12 and a half hour journey!

The morning tends to be quiet as it's at a very unsociable time. The evening is really a day train, you aren't really on the overnight bit until you switch at Edinburgh.

That said, I do think they should add a Mk2 or Mk3 TSO and order one more "TPE style" Mk5 TSO to provide a separate coach for day passenger use.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Why don't they put labels on the seats? It would avoid a lot of these problems and make everyone's journey a bit more relaxing and less prone to conflict.

Why doesn't everyone just sit in their booked seat? It's not like there isn't a seat selector that you are encouraged to use (unlike VTWC's which is a bit hidden at the end of the purchase process), and ticket offices should be able to do specific seats, so if you don't have a satisfactory seat and it was available at the time of booking that's your loss.

In my view the guard should enforce use of the correct seats on reservations compulsory trains. If I board en-route I should not have to ask anyone to move, nor take a less favourable seat than I have agreed at the time of booking unless a change of rolling stock was necessary.

 

[BRX]

Why doesn't everyone just sit in their booked seat? It's not like there isn't a seat selector that you are encouraged to use (unlike VTWC's which is a bit hidden at the end of the purchase process), and ticket offices should be able to do specific seats, so if you don't have a satisfactory seat and it was available at the time of booking that's your loss.

In my view the guard should enforce use of the correct seats on reservations compulsory trains. If I board en-route I should not have to ask anyone to move, nor take a less favourable seat than I have agreed at the time of booking unless a change of rolling stock was necessary.

I don't disagree in principle - I do think the guard should check that no one is sitting in someone else's seat, and that ideally passengers shouldn't be put in the position of having to ask each other to move (I feel similarly about enforcement of quiet coach quietness as it happens).

On my journey last week I did sit in my booked seat - one facing another, occupied seat (just about the last one I'd have chosen but when I booked, the seating diagram was showing only one or two left available). With someone sat opposite me it was fairly clear I had little chance of a comfortable night but I could see two pairs of adjacent seats (as well as several others) were free. Knowing from previous experience that it was pretty unlikely that all of these seats would be taken up by folk boarding at Crewe or Preston I'm afraid I wasn't selfless enough to endure a night in the facing seat just in case one of those free ones actually was taken by someone who'd have to ask me to move.
If the seats just had labels on them - this wouldn't need to be an issue.
I'm writing this from the seats southbound from Inverness. They have reservation labels on. So I can see there are plenty of seats spare, and no need to worry about spreading out onto the unbooked one next to my reserved one. Result will hopefully be a slightly more restful night for me, and no-one inconvenienced as a consequence.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Presumably the staff know which seats are spare, so would not a reasonable way to deal with that be just to say to the guard you're not happy with your seat and ask if another is free? That's how things work on a plane.

 

[TimboM]

92 044 let out to play on the Down Highlander tonight (1S25)

 

[Far north 37]

92 044 let out to play on the Down Highlander tonight (1S25)

Funnily enough i was only thinking today where 92044 has been not seen it about for ages take it had been stuck down at the tunnel for a while.

 

[BRX]

Presumably the staff know which seats are spare, so would not a reasonable way to deal with that be just to say to the guard you're not happy with your seat and ask if another is free? That's how things work on a plane.

Yup, agreed that would be reasonable. If you can find them, which is not impossible but they are often somewhere else on the train.
Or they could just put reservation tabs on, which is how things are supposed to work on a train.

 

[BRX]

Funnily enough i was only thinking today where 92044 has been not seen it about for ages take it had been stuck down at the tunnel for a while.

044 and 032 have been spending most of their days at the tunnel lately.

 

[PaxVobiscum]

Why doesn't everyone just sit in their booked seat? It's not like there isn't a seat selector that you are encouraged to use ...

That's all very well until the coach that appears on the night is totally different, like the 2+2 BSO I had to FTW and back.

 

[TimboM]

044 and 032 have been spending most of their days at the tunnel lately.

They're also the last two yet to receive the full "reliability mods" hence they're generally allocated to the tunnel and only used occasionally on the beds these days.

 

[BRX]

Just out of interest, from YouTube videos I've seen, people seem to film a lot of the trip when most people would be sleeping, quite often out of the door windows. Have any of you done this and seen the Sleeper passing in the opposite direction?

Done!

(last night)

 

[BRX]

A few months ago I made a film showing the process of assembling the southbound Highlander at Waverley - on my trip last week I made a similar video showing the reverse process travelling northbound:

A little more difficult to catch everything in this direction - as things are happening simultaneously at each end of the very long platform. To film everything would be a two person operation. I decided to film the Inverness and Aberdeen portions leaving which meant that I could not get the 92 being taken off and the FW coaches being added on. Even so it meant a bit of legging it up and down the platform. Please excuse any dodgy shots and abrupt cuts; in my defence it was 4am, I'd had virtually no sleep in the seats and was feeling a little off colour with a head cold coming on!

 

[Essexman]

Most interesting. Amazing that I (usually) sleep through all this.

 

[BRX]

The 73/9s make a very distinctive sound. You don't hear them much when they're on the front of the train but you do when they are running around and buffering up during the shunt operations. Even though they've only been about for a couple of years, I think that sound has become imprinted onto my psyche from hearing it whilst semi-conscious in the middle of the night during this procedure!

 

[gcmozart]

Considering everything that goes on at Edinburgh I cannot believe I have never woken up & I thought I was a light sleeper.

Agree with Essexman very interesting video - shame that is not a like feature for posts

 

[Craig2601]

Interesting that the Aberdeen sleeper only has 4 coaches, would’ve expected more to be on this portion. So does the FW portion have 6 coaches in summer? I know in winter it’s down to 4 (or it was last time I travelled on it).

 

[BRX]

Interesting that the Aberdeen sleeper only has 4 coaches, would’ve expected more to be on this portion. So does the FW portion have 6 coaches in summer? I know in winter it’s down to 4 (or it was last time I travelled on it).

It has done for the last two or three summers yes. An encouraging sign - I hope - of its increasing popularity (and maybe even validation for those of us who said the proposal to axe it back in the 90s was short sighted).

Of course it may also indicate dwindling demand on the Aberdeen run.

 

[marks87]

Presumably the double 73 on the Aberdeen was for operational reasons. It seems a bit overkill for four coaches!

 

[fgwrich]

It has done for the last two or three summers yes. An encouraging sign - I hope - of its increasing popularity (and maybe even validation for those of us who said the proposal to axe it back in the 90s was short sighted).

Of course it may also indicate dwindling demand on the Aberdeen run.

Indeed, faced with the fluctuating demand for the Aberdeen portion vs rapidly increasing demand on the Fort William Portions, Caledonian Sleeper have started to bulk up the Fort William portion with an extra Sleeper or two. Aberdeen has I believe for some years now largely depended on the North Sea Oil trade traffic, while Fort William and Inverness have seen a steady increase on tourism.

As for an earlier comment about 73s to Inverness. They have indeed ran through to Inverness already. I've been lucky to have both a pair of 73s and a 66+73 Combination on the Inverness portion, while 73+67 combinations have also ran in the past as well. With GB buying up more 73s and waiting on Network Rails test train contracts, I wonder if there could be a few more of the rebuilt 73s in the pipeline?

 

[BRX]

I wondered if at some point there may be an argument for running the Fort William seated/lounge coaches through, and demoting the Aberdeen ones to be the ones that are attached/detached at Edinburgh (sorry Aberdonians).

 

[47271]

I wondered if at some point there may be an argument for running the Fort William seated/lounge coaches through, and demoting the Aberdeen ones to be the ones that are attached/detached at Edinburgh (sorry Aberdonians).

There's more to the Aberdeen section than Aberdeen and there's already signs that they're promoting more to the tourist market with, for example, transport provided between Leuchars and St Andrews. We can only hope that this will grow when the new trains arrive.

Intermediate stations between Inverness and Perth do healthy business for the Inverness section and there are some quite large towns down the east coast that I'm sure they could be doing more from.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wondered if at some point there may be an argument for running the Fort William seated/lounge coaches through, and demoting the Aberdeen ones to be the ones that are attached/detached at Edinburgh (sorry Aberdonians).

I did wonder that. I also wondered if it would be viable to switch to two half trains and run to Aberdeen via Inverness rather than a separate train - how busy are the intermediate stations on the Aberdeen line?