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Caledonian Sleeper

island

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30 Dec 2010
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Euston to Aberdeen Friday night. Service only resumed this week:

'Due to late notification of staff sickness we have had to change the final part of your Sleeper journey on Saturday morning.

Your Sleeper service will depart at the scheduled time from London Euston (21:15) in the same rooms as booked. The train will arrive into Edinburgh Waverley at 04:00am and need to disembark at 04:15am. There is Scotrail Service to Aberdeen which departs Edinburgh Waverley at 0530, arriving in Aberdeen at 0813'


Disembark at 4:15am after a few Friday night beers after work and hang around until 05:30 in Waverley. Glad i wasn't on that one and hope they get compensation over and above their 30 odd minutes delay repay.
That is brutal and would put anyone off travelling CS.
 
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Steddenm

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Update from BBC News Scotland:


Firefighters are tackling a blaze on board the Caledonian Sleeper at Cupar station in Fife.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was alerted to the incident in one of the carriages of a train on the Highlander route between London and Aberdeen, Inverness and Fort William.
Three fire engines went to the scene when the alarm was raised at 05:46 on Wednesday.
There are no reports of any casualties.
ScotRail said the incident was disrupting its services between Edinburgh and Arbroath as no trains were able to run through the area.

_120569663_sleeper.jpg
 

Peter Sarf

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Was the fire in one of the locomotives ?. I presume the BBC report is wrong and they just do not distinguish between a carriage and a locomotive ?. Both are "vehicles".
 

800001

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Was the fire in one of the locomotives ?. I presume the BBC report is wrong and they just do not distinguish between a carriage and a locomotive ?. Both are "vehicles".
Was in locomotive, and fire service quoted carriage as well.
 

ainsworth74

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That is brutal and would put anyone off travelling CS.
Well it certainly puts a different spin on the marketing on their website!

Caledonian Sleeper is a gateway to a world of possibilities with our overnight rail service bringing a touch of the extraordinary to travel between London and Scotland.
 

Deltic1961

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30 May 2018
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Having read this thread for some time there's no way I would ever risk it from Aberdeen to London. Others may not be so aware of all the pitfalls.
 

AberdeenBill

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Poole
Having read this thread for some time there's no way I would ever risk it from Aberdeen to London. Others may not be so aware of all the pitfalls.
Pre-COVID it always worked well for me and certainly never had to change trains in the middle of the night due to staffing issues. My last trip in May however involved being decanted at Perth then catching the first Scotrail to Aberdeen (albeit we missed the connection). That arrangement is not too bad but only works if there is space in the Inverness section. Getting up at about 4am to go and wait on a platform is a different matter.
 

Highlandspring

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14 Oct 2017
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Is there single line working at Cupar?

No, the train made a wrong direction movement to Ladybank DGL to clear the line and normal services restarted at about 1030. The dead loco was recovered to Craigentinny about an hour later.
 

ainsworth74

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Well, technically it was an extraordinary event :p
Well exactly! It's all spot on, just in a totally different way to that intended! :lol:
Might as well do that from your original starting point and fly. Getting-up at 4 a.m. totally negates any benefit of using a "sleeper".
Indeed. Personally I'd have expected them to either offer a hotel in London and then pass on service trains in the morning for affected passengers or to have taken you to Edinburgh and then chucked out shortly after 7am for the 0727 Scotrail to Aberdeen. That's the sort of treatment I'd expect from an operator billing themselves as some sort of luxury experience.
 

alangla

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Wonder if a 66 & that Nightstar generator van would be a viable option for the Fort William portion given this latest setback. Given the way the Ft William portion operates, presumably it could be left coupled to the seated coach & travel on the rear heading north and behind the loco heading south - gets round the problem of not having a gangway etc & avoids the double-shunt needed with a 66+73 combo.
 

Deltic1961

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It's just an issue there's been for decades with infrastructure in the UK. Charge top dog but provide rekindled scrap from the 70s. The Scotrail HST refurbishment has hardly been a roaring sucess either ......
 

MrEd

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13 Jan 2019
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Wonder if a 66 & that Nightstar generator van would be a viable option for the Fort William portion given this latest setback. Given the way the Ft William portion operates, presumably it could be left coupled to the seated coach & travel on the rear heading north and behind the loco heading south - gets round the problem of not having a gangway etc & avoids the double-shunt needed with a 66+73 combo.
The problem is that the 66s do not have Dellner couplings so cannot couple directly to the Mk5 sleeper stock. Only the 73s can do this (the 73 is needed as a coupling translator as well as an ETS generator). I don’t think that it would be possible to fit Dellners to the 66s given that they are also needed for freight workings with conventional screw couplings.

Well something needs to be done. Ok so the 92 is have finally just about settled down, but the 73 has never worked to the satisfaction of all concerned and we certainly don't need a string of thermal incidents like this
I don’t think that the 73s are any worse than the 67s (which were far from reliable and had a habit of failing in very inconvenient locations on the Inverness and Fort William routes). CS even had to insist on paired 67s for a while in the latter part of 2015 after a series of failures on the Highland Main Line (culminating in 67007 overheating at Slochd and the train being stranded for most of the night).
 

Caleb2010

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25 Nov 2015
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Dufftown
And of course you only hear the horror stories on here!
The rest of the time there’s no mention of on time arrivals, excellent customer services and spot on locos and coaches.
73’s are generally no more reliable than other re-built stock, no more unreliable either!!!
 

alangla

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The problem is that the 66s do not have Dellner couplings so cannot couple directly to the Mk5 sleeper stock. Only the 73s can do this (the 73 is needed as a coupling translator as well as an ETS generator). I don’t think that it would be possible to fit Dellners to the 66s given that they are also needed for freight workings with conventional screw couplings.
Argh!! Would still need the double shunt then & the generator would need to be fitted as the coupling adapter. Probably a non starter then.
 

IanH440

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11 Oct 2017
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Sub contract the FW haulage to a Riley class5 (black) and drag the 73 round as a ETHEL.... now that would bring in the punters...
 

driverd

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29 Mar 2021
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UK
Again, seconding what others are saying, I've never had a complaint about the 73s. They've almost always performed when asked and I must have been behind one a good 9 or 10 times. I think I've only seen a 66 subbed once.

I don't think they're massively different to any other new loco (which in essence is what they are) - problems always arise every now and again.
 

43096

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Well something needs to be done. Ok so the 92 is have finally just about settled down, but the 73 has never worked to the satisfaction of all concerned and we certainly don't need a string of thermal incidents like this
The 92s have been reliable for some time: ever since the mod programme back in 2017/18, in fact. So, no "finally just about" about it. As for the 73s, presumably you're involved with the fleet to know what the view of GBRf's engineers and operators is and know the opinions of Caledonian Sleeper management, too?
 

Bill57p9

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1 Dec 2019
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Ayrshire
A CS spokesperson, quoted in the BBC News article:
"All of tonight's Caledonian Sleeper services are due to run as scheduled."

That will be apart from the Aberdeen portion, which is currently running ECS to Edinburgh. Again. :rolleyes:

Looks like 1S25 has a fault.
1S25 (Highlander) has left Euston 48 late. Probably make most of that up by Edinburgh given a trouble free run.
 

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