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Man Vic to London Sleeper?

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Saxonia

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29 Aug 2010
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Aah - now this is a lovely introduction for me to railforums, given that it reawakens so many happy memories of Scottish railrovers in the early 80's. I used the internal Scottish sleepers most nights of my weeks' travels (along with the Euston-Ft William service), & it was an invaluable way of getting around, not to mention very cheap as well. The Glasgow portion used to deposit a couple of coaches at Perth for Dundee/Aberdeen before attaching to the Edinburgh portion, & plodding onwards to Inverness - when the service was Mk 1/2 steam heat stock, two of the 47's that I vividly recall being in regular use were 47206/270 (ED). On the return journey, the two portions were split at Stirling, with the Edinburgh portion having quite a wait before venturing via Falkirk Grahamston to "Auld Reekie". Southbound from Inverness to Glasgow was invaluable in connecting for the "West Highlander" at 0600 ex Glasgow Queen St, whilst the northbound run gave excellent connections for the Kyle & Far North services (with attendant class 26 or 37 on steam heat stock), often after a great breakfast in the station refreshment rooms.
Alas, since privatisation, I have ony done the one trip onto the West Highland by scheduled Sleeper services to celebrate my 40th birthday a few years ago - still, it did provide for an absolutely barnstorming run over the WHL courtesy of 37411, after 37428 had "sat down" at Linlithgow, barely into the journey from Waverley.
Oh - such happy, carefree days that they were, indeed.........
 
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R

RailUK Forums

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What killed the number of sleeper services off was the speeding up of the daytime services. Fifty years ago a suggestion that you could have done a London to Edinburgh and back in a day would have been greeted with hoots of derision.
Previous posters have mention trains from Brighton to places north. In the seventies there were services to Manchester, Glasgow/Edinburgh, Liverpool and Derby. Certainly in 1988 there was a morning service to Manchester and an afternoon service to Edinburgh/Glasgow - or was it the other war 'round? The inbound trains from the north used to pass through Gatwick at about lunchtime and in the early evening - about seven I think. I think the morning one was 1O66 and the evening one was 1O90, they were worked by Brighton crews who relieved at Reading.
 

Saxonia

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29 Aug 2010
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Mm - have to emphasise that I am going purely from memory here, so may well be wrong, but if I recall correctly as regards to the Brighton-Manchester/Scotland + associated return services, the Manchester-Brighton left at the somewhat early hour of around 0520, with its counterpart leaving Brighton around 1430. As to the erstwhile "Sussex Scot" with portions for both Glasgow & Edinburgh, I believe this to have left Brighton around 0920, with the inward working from Scotland leaving around 1100 from both Scottish cities - on summer Saturdays, this service served Eastbourne instead of Brighton. Regrettably, the Brighton services were renowned for appalling class 47 reliability - a great shame for what once was such a useful cross-London service that catered for many different destinations.
 

Foxhound

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I remember doing the Glasgow - Inverness Internals in the 80s - Did it rather a lot on a 2 week silver rover, cleared 47519 for a thousand in just a few trips....:oops: And I wasn't there for the spoons!
 

Foxhound

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I do remember doing daycoaches on a sleeper from Euston to Man Picc in Dec 1987/Jan 1988. There was a loco change at Stockport on one occasion IIRC - an 85 for an 85. My Lordz!
 

Matt Taylor

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The MAN/LIV-EUS sleeper ran right up to the 1990s and I used it a number of times in summer 1990, it would split at Stafford.
 
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