Had Power Cars 43135 and 43176 on the 12:55 from Inverness - Edinburgh today. I was in coach C 42280. I was waiting in Inverness before the train arrived from its previous journey so I did see that when it arrived, Power Car 43176 was shut down immediately. As stated above, this does seem to be the policy to shut down the leading power car in stations. On this occasion the train arrived just after 12:00 so would have been idling for around 50 minutes if not shut down.
This is the first time I have done a Scotrail HST. I regularly use LNER and CrossCountry HST's but not any others. I had no real issues with the classic interior. The lack of tables is certainly noticeable but the work at Wabtec will be sorting that. Other than that I found the interior comfortable, bright and clean. There was noticeably less squeaking noise from the vestibule than an LNER HST. This was a busy service so the extra room of the HST was needed.
Before each stop the guard announced that it was slam door and explained the door opening procedure.
We did arrive into Edinburgh around 13 minutes late but this was not related to the HST (I believe it was a passenger incident in Coach D).
Overall I thought the HST provided a good journey and I can only see that improving with the refurbished sets. Hope that Scotrail can work on the roll out and reliability.
I was getting on the 12:47 to Nairn as your service was boarding, and heard quite a few positive comments from other passengers heading for the 12:55 along the lines of ‘ooh, it’s a ‘proper’ train’.
We were less lucky yesterday on the 13:33 from Inverness to Edinburgh.
We had arrived in from Elgin on First Advances, on a 158 with no First and no seat reservations throughout. Someone had been ‘ill’ in one of the two coaches, so that was rather grim, too.
Arrived at Inverness into Platform 2, which was also booked for our Edinburgh HST to find a 170 and a 158 already stacked.
Realtime Trains didn’t show the HST coming in from the depot as having moved and, sure enough, the departures board started scrolling that Edinburgh would be three carriages only.
Again, we were on First Advances, and luckily managed to get seats, as there were obviously no reservations throughout. There was also no trolley.
The air conditioning was arctic, and we were delayed at Tomatin with signalling issues.
We came to an emergency stop somewhere in Perthshire with what sounded like a warning klaxon going in the back cab. No explanation of what that was all about, even after restarting.
Finally ground into Waverley 34 minutes late, with the boards at intermediate stations advising that the delay was ‘due to late running’.
Not a great journey, altogether, and no HST, so this post is almost completely off-topic.