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Prospects of HSTs surviving on "Highland Chieftain" (London/Inverness VTEC)

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Failed Unit

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Surely it was somewhat profitable to offer an intercity-style service to Inverness? Of course, Scotrail can do it itself now.
2 services to Inverness from England often comes up. Possibly viable with an late afternoon departure from Inverness. But considering the last train South from Edinburgh is is 2100. I doubt they will do it as the reason it is still 2100 is no demand.
 
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As I understand it, the idea was originally that the IEP trains would take over East Coast services north of Edinburgh using their bi-mode capabilities, meaning that we should expect the last Highland Chieftain service worked by HST within the next couple of years.

However, I've recently seen suggestion that VTEC will retain some of its HSTs for this route, due to concerns about performance of the bi-mode trains - is this correct?

Answering my own question from the start of the thread - they survived until the 9th of December 2019 on which day I travelled from Inverness to Kings Cross on the final one. I've been getting on that 0755 (used to be 0750!) departure a few times most years since I was old enough to remember so it was a little sad to do it for the last time. Of course HSTs aren't entirely gone from Inverness as they are now (hopefully) coming into action on the Scotrail services, but shortened and without the all important slam doors and droplights so not quite the same thing. If we're lucky... the 125 group will manage to get some Valentas back inside some power cars and maybe at some point it'll be possible to arrive again in Inverness on the real thing. This is what I filmed on monday.

 
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