The Anonymous Widower

Scotland’s New Railway Race

There have been  five railway races involving Scotland over the years.

• London To Edinburgh in 1888
• London To Aberdeen in 1895
• London To Edinburgh in 1901
• LNER and LMS
• British Rail

This article in Rail Engineer is entitled Full Glasgow To Edinburgh Electric Service In July.

The article suggests this could be another railway race with Scotland involved.

In the red corner are the devious English, who are entering a series of redundant Class 365 trains, that nobody else wants.

• They are thirty-year-old trains
• They were built by British Rail.
• To improve their relationship with drivers, WAGN fitted them with cab air-conditioning. Marketing then named them Happy-Train, as the air-conditioning inlet, had given them a smile.
• It has also been rumoured that their class number was chosen to give the air of year-round reliability.

To gain an advantage, the first train was actually sneaked into Glasgow by road, as no-one was sure that they could fit the routes to Scotland.

To get the trains ready for Scotland, work is being done by the German company; Knorr-Bremse Rail Services at Springburn in Glasgow.

The Scottish entry in the blue corner, is the Hitachi Class 385 train, which is manufactured mainly in Japan and screwed together at Newton-Aycliffe.

Unfortunately, the train was designed for drivers with Asian eyesight and the curved windows in the cabs, give unreliable images at night, with the average Scottish driver, even if they’ve been training hard on Irn-Bru!

It is hoped that new windscreens will be approved for use soon!

So the race is on to see who can get their train into service first.

As to the verdict on which train is better, I think we could be seeing a split decision.

Glasgow will prefer one train and Edinburgh will prefer the other!

June 1, 2018 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Class 365 Train, Class 385 Train, Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Program