Sunday 15th December 2019 saw the final day of the HST's in revenue earning service on the ECML with LNER. Fittingly the day was dubbed #NationalHSTDay, which was a fitting tribute to these fine servants of the ECML.
Being a Deltic fan - I was on locomotive 55022 on the Deltic Scotsman Farewell into Kings Cross. I'm not really a fan of them taking over from the Deltics. Got to like them over the years but not the same once they took the screaming Valenta engines out. Living next to the ECML I watched all the HST diagrams over the weekend. Even went to Spalding station on the Joint line for the very last northbound passenger working Saturday evening, no other train fans around.
There is a four day Farewell tour this week below. The HST for this has been repainted blue and gray
Nine HST sets are moving next door from Kings Cross to St Pancreas so only a three minute walk to still see them. These will be used on that line till the Midland get their new trains. The Midland HST being taken out of service.
Great Western Railway still has 24 powercars to form 11 four-carriage formations known as "Castle Class" sets for use on local services between Cardiff and Penzance. Twenty-seven sets each with four or five carriages are for Scotrail Inter7City service and are being refurbished.
Still plenty of life left for some HSTs while others will be going for scrap
Agreed they where never the same once the Valenta's where removed , MTU'd or muted more like , Still at least we had the sound of the prototype power car (for a while) and with the 125 group receiving 2 ex EMR power cars I'm looking forward to hearing that awesome Valenta thrash again .
