HST Documentary and Equinox (British Rail)

I have just watched Equinox from channel 4 from over 20 years ago (a little more) but was amazed with the first statistic...

'The class 91 reaches 125mph at full power in just under 2 and a half minutes' !!!!!!

Second from the HST Documentary....

Bristol record speed by an HST of 1hr giving an average of 112mph! A 'normal journey time of 1hr 12 minutes
Journey to Cardiff 1hr 45

What happened to those journey times on the Great Western?! The East Coast has just started to pull back to 1980's times with the 1hr 45 minute run to York etc

Finally... I do believe we have had 135mph running in this country (always unofficially of course) with the HST's that could do it and break for it, though I'm sure uneconomically and at higher maintenance costs if it was regularly done hypothetically speaking. So... after all this time, and until ERTMS comes in for 140mph running, we will only be taking ourselves back to where we already used to be in the 1980's with IEP project in speed terms. Even then, no BR people over-speeding safely on the engineering led railway of old!

Here is the first documentary referred to:

Equinoxe: 'Trouble on the Line'

[youtube]WJfaKKVS5Hc[/youtube]

And the other one..Inter City 125

[youtube]AGBQxWwMbIA[/youtube]

It was called 'Trouble on the Line'. I'll find it and post.
http://youtu.be/WJfaKKVS5Hc

I always attributed the slowdown to the Passengers Charter - trains were slowed down so they were "late" less often.

I remember KGX to Grantham in 59 minutes, with one stop at Stevenage in the early days of the 91s

RichW1 said:

Bristol record speed by an HST of 1hr giving an average of 112mph! A 'normal journey time of 1hr 12 minutes
Journey to Cardiff 1hr 45

What happened to those journey times on the Great Western?

Click to expand...

The main thing is that it was turned by successive franchisees from an Inter-City route to an outer suburban route, and the nonstop runs of old were lost to trains stopping at Reading, Didcot, Swindon, etc, etc. Get to Paddington just before time in the evening headed to Bristol or Swansea and you don't even get a seat, have to stand out to Reading because it's full of Thames Valley commuters, whose own substantial Class 47 + 11 commuter trains of those early HST days to Reading/Didcot etc have gone (in part because Heathrow Express took the spare paths).

I always attributed the slowdown to the Passengers Charter - trains were slowed down so they were "late" less often

Click to expand...

My experience is that, although timings have been slowed down, I am now late just as often, and on reflection actually more often (especially if I am getting off at an intermediate stop) because operating has become notably more sloppy than in days of old. This is particularly noticeable in the time taken for the service to recover from any interruption. Old operating skills were just poo-poo'd and lost.