70014IronDuke
Established Member
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- 13 Jun 2015
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"North Of Leeds" happens to be handy ...
BY 1965 - the only "fast" train was the stalwart "Thames Clyde" - St Pancras 1015 calling at Leicester / Trent / Chesterfield / Sheffield / Leeds (231 p.m - 241 p.m) - thence Skipton , Hellifield , Settle , Appleby West and Carlisle at 4.54 pm
Even with those stops, the TC did Leeds - Carlisle in 2 hr 13 minutes. Not bad at all, really. I assume it was timed for a Cl 45 by 1965.
But surely there was a 10.30-ish Leeds - Glasgow Class 1? This formed the 16.00-ish return which left Carlisle at 18.50, as you mention. In LMS days this carried a couple of Pullmans, I believe - converted later to dining and buffet cars. (Extraordinary indeed, even at that! Maybe they got a lot of regular diners from Glasgow to Dumfries or some such?)
AH - Correction - you have mentioned the Leeds-Glasgow (at 12.45 in Carlisle) - sorry, I missed that first read through.
- the overall service was very thin , - an 0734 am Appleby to Carlisle , a Leeds to Carlisle "express" into the Border city at 1245 p.m. A Hellifield to Carlisle local 1208 p.m. - arrival 2.28 p.m - thence the Thames Clyde and a local from Bradford to Carlisle , arriving at 7.19 p.m. The first southbound train in daylight was an 08.05 local to Hellifield , then 2 expresses - and nothing till the 4.37 p.m to Bradford all stations , an 6.05 p.m local to Appleby and a final semi-fast at 6.50 p.m (from Glasgow) to Leeds (9.13 p.m) , which amazingly had both dining and buffet cars.
There is little doubt that today the line gets a service frequency better than ever in history, even if 90% of trains are more or less all stops, and limited to just Leeds - Carlisle.