Caledonian Sleeper Train

[teuchter]

The one from Fort William leaves early enough that you get to enjoy a few hours of scenery before it gets dark in the summer

You can enjoy several hours of daylight on both the Fort William and Inverness ones, in the morning northbound, if you get up early enough.

 

[T & P]

You can enjoy several hours of daylight on both the Fort William and Inverness ones, in the morning northbound, if you get up early enough.

I was thinking just that. Given that in London it is light at 4 am in June, and even earlier up in Scotland, in summer months there must be a good 4-6 hours at least of daylight travel. The trick of course is to be awake for it.

But I wouldn’t mind the darkness myself anyway. For me the appeal of sleeper trains comes from two different angles: as a distinctly affordable alternative to expensive fast high speed daytime trains, or as a glamorous travelling experience where having a good dinner and social nightcap with fellow passengers on a train’s dining car and spend the night in a well appointed cabin are the obvious attractions. From either perspective, the view out of the window is a just minor drawback.

 

[teuchter]

Don't tell anyone but last night I took a wander up to Euston to watch the very first departure of the new stock. I'm actually a bit sad the old stock is going; it's what I've travelled on my whole life. I like the lounge cars with the loose chairs, the fact everything's a bit creaky, and particularly the fact you can open the windows; a favourite part of the northbound journey for me is getting up early-ish, collecting my coffee and standing by the window getting some fresh air straight off them Highland moors. The new trains are only running on the 'Lowlander' to Glasgow/Edinburgh for now; the 'Highlander' train to Inverness, Fort William and Aberdeen will continue with the old carriages for another month or so. I'll go for my last trip on them in a couple of weeks.

So I'll resent the sealed and sterile atmosphere of the new trains for a while...but it does look like they've done quite a nice job on them, and we'll see if they increase custom. There's a bit of a worry prices will now go up, to focus more on wealthy tourists instead of the public service aspect of the operation. There was a big missed opportunity with the new trains to provide an intermediate level of accommodation - something along the line of couchettes or sleeping pods. That was supposed to be part of it but for whatever reason got dropped. As it is, you choose between the cabins, which can be affordable-ish if there are two of you travelling, but pretty expensive for solo travellers, or the seated coach, which is cheap, and I do it sometimes, but you arrive feeling pretty much destroyed unless it's quiet and you manage to back one of the table areas where you can stretch out a bit. Another stupid thing is they've stopped offering the ability to share a cabin with a stranger - not everyone is comfortable with this but it always used to be there as an option for people who were ok with it, and it made it more affordable and carted less fresh air around.

 

[Dogsauce]

I did the Inverness one southbound in the seated carriage many years back, had an open return for work so thought I’d give it a go. Just myself and a family in a declassified First Mk2 carriage, but they had a noisy baby which meant sleep didn’t happen. I jumped off at somewhere like Lancaster or Preston at four or five in the morning with a three hour wait for a local train down to Manchester so I could then get home on a transpennine service. Sub-zero temperatures and conveniently none of the waiting rooms were open yet, although eventually a staff member took pity and opened one up. Bit rough really.

 

[teuchter]

Seated coach is still a mk2! I think pretty much the oldest carriage in regular service on the network now. The last couple of years they have been spending as little as they can on them, so it's not unusual for it to be out of action in which case you get bumped to a sleeper cabin for free. Otherwise, you take your chances with the aircon that seems to swing wildly from freezing to boiling throughout the night.

The pictures below I took last summer; this is the seated coach that gets added to the Fort William portion which is even more ancient. Almost like being on a heritage railway...

 

[quimcunx]

At Easter they bumped us onto a replacement coach because the carriage was unheated and the berths were full.

 

[teuchter]

At Easter they bumped us onto a replacement coach because the carriage was unheated and the berths were full.

I hope you got all your money back.

I think they should offer to put you in a hotel and on an early day train, as an option, when that happens.

 

[teuchter]

Whilst the rest of London got on with its business as normal this morning, a very small number of people, which may have included me, converged on platform 15 at Euston station a bit before 8am to mark the end of an era, as the very last sleeper service using the 'old' coaches arrived from the Highlands.



From now on they will all be operated by the new stuff... and that isn't going terribly well so far.