DelW
Established Member
- Joined
- 15 Jan 2015
- Messages
- 3,896
I have a question prompted by reading a short story over the weekend, in which a character was described as regularly taking a train to London, always sitting facing the engine. This struck me as an anachronism, since although there are still loco-hauled trains into London, AFAIK they are all push-pull sets, so "facing the engine" can be either way relative to direction of travel.
This led me to wondering when the last regularly-timetabled [1] trains ran, that had to run-round at termini, either in London or elsewhere. My guesses for London would be either WCML before the cl90 / DVTs, Midland before the HSTs, or East Anglia mainline pre-electrification (since IIRC post electrification the 86s ran with mk2 DBSOs). I'd guess at late 80s or early 90s for those? Would there have been non-push-pull services elsewhere that ran later? I think that all current loco-hauled trains either use driving trailers or top & tail locos.
To be fair, I think the story was probably written in the 1990s, so it might not have been much of an anchrionism then.
[1] i.e. excluding charters, steam specials, etc.
This led me to wondering when the last regularly-timetabled [1] trains ran, that had to run-round at termini, either in London or elsewhere. My guesses for London would be either WCML before the cl90 / DVTs, Midland before the HSTs, or East Anglia mainline pre-electrification (since IIRC post electrification the 86s ran with mk2 DBSOs). I'd guess at late 80s or early 90s for those? Would there have been non-push-pull services elsewhere that ran later? I think that all current loco-hauled trains either use driving trailers or top & tail locos.
To be fair, I think the story was probably written in the 1990s, so it might not have been much of an anchrionism then.
[1] i.e. excluding charters, steam specials, etc.