Virgin Crosscountrys' mark 2 rakes were formed of an mark 2F RFB micro-buffet vehicle, 5 TSOs and a BSO. You are right,
ash39, that no mark 2 buffet or restaurant vehicles were originally built, but at the end of the eighties thirty two mark 2F FOs were converted into the first buffets that were used in the Crosscountry rakes.
On the West Coast, mark 2 rakes were typically nine carriages in length, and in late Intercity and early Virgin days utilised a mark 3 catering vehicle in their formation. They were typically formed of 5 x Mark 2 TSOs, a mark 3 RFM vehicle, and 3 x Mark 2 FOs, with a DVT at the London end, adjacent to the first class accomodation.
The mark 3 DVTs were utilised with all the West Coast mark 3 rakes, and with most, and maybe all, of the West Coast mark 2 rakes, while the Crosscountry rakes made use of BSOs for luggage storage.
I use words like "usually", "typically" and "generally" a lot in this post, because my abiding memory of the West Coast operation in early Virgin days is of barely organised chaos: Trains regularly ran in reverse formation, or shortformed, or with locos heading DVTs with TDM failures, or with locos hauling failed locos. It was even not unknown for an entire West Coast mark 3 rake, complete with DVT, to make it onto long distance Crosscountry services to the North East! The same often appeared to be true of the loco allocations:
In general, the West Coast mark 2 rakes were kept largely to the shorter distance services, such as Euston to Birmingham (A notable stronghold of the mark 2 rakes) and Manchester. The West Coast class 86s were also limited principally to these shorter distance services, although 87s, and presumably an occasional 90, could also turn up at New Street.
However, Virgin liveried class 86s could be found along the full length of the West Coast route as they worked the shorter Crosscountry mark 2 formations from Birmingham and Manchester to Edinburgh and Glasgow: In the loco hauled days of Virgin Crosscountry, Birmingham and Manchester to Edinburgh/Glasgow were both part of the Crosscountry network, and Birmingham to Scotland services were part of a longer distance service from the South Coast.
The class 87s were of course built specifically to power the Euston to Glasgow services, and throughout their lives on the West Coast they remained the dominant form of motive power on these services. At one time in the nineties, every Euston to Scotland service was booked for a class 87, although what services were booked for and what actually turned up were often very different things. Mark 3 rakes were mainly used on the Glasgow services, and also played a large part on the Manchester and Liverpool services.
Typically, class 90s were used mostly on Manchester and Liverpool services from my observations, but they were also no strangers to the Glasgow services by any means.
So in short, after that long winded post, anything goes for the West Coast in that era! And also beaten to it several times over in the amount of time it took me to write this post!
) would turn up regularly.
Particularly distressing on one occasion when the buffet car was locked out of use 
