This weekend sees the final runs of the Virgin Crosscountry HST fleet, with the start of the winter timetable on Monday their fleet will either move to new operators or go into store. The West Coast owned units will continue to be used by Virgin over the winter, but they are due to bow out with the next summer timetable. Here's some pics to remember them by... Summer 2001 sees this set passing the semaphores at Lostwithiel, in Cornwall 23rd June this year and a set is seen powering West past the M5 at Exminster, near Exeter. On a beautiful 8th June 2003, this set passed under the Brunel footbridge at Dawlish Warren. The West Coast sets will be staying on for the winter, here is buffer fitted power car 43068 "The Red Arrows" at Rugby on the 29th June. Some sets have already moved on, here is power car 43088 working for Midland Mainline, leaving Leicester on the 12th July. This winter will see all Virgin services in the South West of the UK operated by these Voyager sets, here is one passing Exminster on 25th June. For the summer season 2004, Virgin will be hiring back HST sets from other users, and it has put out to tender for an operator to run two loco hauled sets each weekend. Sounds like next year could be very colourful!
Engineering work will close some parts of the line to the South West tomorrow, so today saw the final runs in Devon and Cornwall. Here is one of the Northbound runs, passing through Dawlish... [ 27. September 2003, 20:50: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
I think a lot of people would prefer to keep HST's instead of Voyagers The HST/Mk 3 coach is the best combination ever to run on Britain's Rails in regular service, it is good they are still in regular use on other lines I expect you will miss them in your part of the country Martyn
We'll still be getting plenty of them from First Great Western, as their new units are staying on London-Bristol & Wales trains, but the red Virgin ones have been a feature now since the early years of privatisation. To be honest, I think the Voyagers will handle the winter traffic pretty well, but they just don't have enough sets to do justice to the summer timetable with them. Many sets down here on Saturday were running as 8-10 car sets, which effectively halves the number of units available to them... I am looking forwards to next summer though, sounds good so far.
