British Rail-Plymouth January 1991

Another West Country vid now, Plymouth in January 1991. A great variety of traction and trains here, a lot of which is history. We see an 08 shunting a parcels train and the Glasgow sleepers arrive. The 08 attaches a sleeper coach + parcels van which came from the Penzance sleeper onto the stock for its ECS move to Laira. A first generation DMU is seen and a loco hauled Inter-City working. A couple of HST's and the Saturday Network SouthEast Plymouth-Brighton working completes the picture. Loco classes seen are 08, 47, 50, DMU & HST, note the power car at 15.20-43173, one that had a sad end....... If you liked the video please subscribe to my channel, there are lots more transport & quirky vids to upload!

[@joncooke671]

Something very iconic about the scream the HST makes. Brilliant video

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

Yes, an HST with its original engine is superb. Pity the one at the end finished up bouncing off a freight train at Southall, a very un-dignified end sadly....

[@KevinOsborne1987]

Class 43 thrash at the end!! Awesome

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

Yes, i always enjoyed Valenta's on full bore!

[@jimtrainz9788]

That’s my childhood right there 🥺😊

[@Jonsie66]

Great upload! Every day scenes of the station pilot going about its duties were often overlooked in favour of the 'big engines' so thank you for capturing them when you could.

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

I always liked (& still do) to capture gronks going about their everyday mundane duties. It was all part of the railway, a lot of it sadly disappeared but i have a fair bit on film here & there, the crowning glory of gronk video must be Scunthorpe Yard (behind the Up platform) where i captured 3 working at once! That was back in 1989-ish, happy days!

[@grahamhearn19]

The shunting was always the thing I liked most, the random stock move of a single mk3 to laira after being taken off a 9 car hat, the shunting of the mail trains from the sidings into platforms 2 and 3. Was always interesting to open the bedroom curtains to see an hst had been stored in platform 3 over night occasionally though

[@edwardsmallpiece7666]

eddy here from exeter devon this vid brings back wonderful memories the road bridge just beyond the station throat iis were i used to spend much time viewing all the action i lived in plymouth from 1960 to 1987 23 years that saw much change i used to love watching the class 52 westerns with a full train blasting out of the station into mutleigh tunnel wonderfull sound and fury all the best to you EDDY exeter

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

Hi Eddy, pleased you like the vid. I don't have too much from here but there is some more to come at some point. More memories for you to enjoy!

[@trainman86trainstramsandmore]

15:33 Very eerie, that particular power car was in Southall rail crash

[@squarewheelsorguk]

I particularly liked the Class 47 thrash you captured here. Brings back memories of pre-electrification travel from Cambridge to Liverpool Street in the 1980s. Thank you!

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

I hope this brings back lots of memories of comfy travel compared to the rancid new stock we have today. A class 700 to Cambridge is not a pleasure but an indurance!

[@tl50camiva]

Great video, or as it said on the side of the Class 50- Glorious! 😀

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

Yes, very conveinient place to put the nameplate, right by the NSE name!

[@hoofie2002]

Nice bit of thrash action there. Did a few trips to and from Plymouth a good few years ago. Always loved the HST

[@alenabenson]

the good old days in plymouth thank you putt ing video on here

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

My pleasure.....

[@Starman2319]

As ever, Soi, great stuff!!

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

Thank you, plenty more to come.....

[@robdlaidler]

It’s so nice to hear the whistle of the 125’s. I don’t hear them any more on modern videos

[@RoadCone411]

Since most Class 43s were re-engined, they don’t make the same sounds. The newer MTU engines are more powerful, efficient, reliable and quieter, essentially giving the class an extra 15-20 years of life.

[@mitchellhurd8958]

It must be the first time I've seen an HST had 2 TGS's in passenger service - I don't recall coming across this in the almost 25 years I've used trains not just HST's!

[@JacobsTrainVideos]

Scary thing is the actual station has barely changed

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

Yes, i was there last May chasing HST's and noticed that as well.....

[@ABCDEF-yf4yu]

Plymouth station is located in a residential area so will be noisy. I haven't been to Plymouth by train for 20 years.

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

I bet when it was built there was no housing there other than for railway staff. Stations were not built in towns but on the edges, over the years the towns expanded and engulfed them!

[@RailTractionEye]

Doesnt feel 33 years ago...😮

[@MrBristolmidland]

I used to live on that hill behind at the beginning.

[@sydmichel]

This has to be the best train video I have seen, especially the screaming 43s. Y'know I used to think they were powered by gas turbine. What was a South east region 50 doing there?

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

The depot that maintained the class 50s was Plymouth Laira. The train we saw arriving was empty stock for the Saturday's only Plymouth-Brighton working, an NSE train. Later on one arrives in the reverse direction and goes ECS to Laira.

[@s125ish]

Looks to be 3 seated coaches on sleeper or one of them is lounge

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

There was seated accomodation on all sleepers years ago, the highland sleeprs didn't run as one train so there was a lot more room for seating coaches as well as sleeping ones. This train of course was withdrawn as under privitisation there was no home for it.

[@krozjr5009]

What’s an NSE loco doing in Plymouth? Bit far from home, wasn’t it?

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

No, the West of England locos and carriages were based at Laira and a few journeys were run to & from Plymouth as wellas a couple ECS in the early hours...see my upload here....kzbin.info/www/bejne/h2HXlqOHlKl8g9E

[@annescholey6546]

Any 50s?

[@JLPCORR]

50033 is there

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

@@JLPCORR 'Glorious Network SouthEast'.........in all her glory!

[@grahamhearn19]

Old smokey joe herself.

[@aljonflavin6760]

TERRIFIC ACTION, all gone.

[@besnikzogaj9887]

1991年だ。

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

Just, it was very early January when i filmed this.

[@besnikzogaj9887]

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus yep. Even Japanese has Shinkansen video 1991.

[@besnikzogaj9887]

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus I've got one thing. Donald Trump is declaring nuclear war on the Hurricane!

[@grahamhearn19]

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus if it was in the xmas school holiday, chances are I was watching you film this from a house in glen park ave. All the variety now gone, replaced with a ghost town.

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

@@grahamhearn19 It was the first Saturday of January 1991. I had come down to the West Country on the Penzance sleepers as far as Newton Abbot (here is the upload of my vid taken there kzbin.info/www/bejne/h2HXlqOHlKl8g9E) and arrived at around 04.00 ish! The plan was to film 50s west of Exeter and i got a few!

[@MarioStahl1983]

It's kind of absurd from today's point of view. They spent more than half a billion pounds on the HST which is a class 43 diesel nightmare. That same money would at the time have been enough to electrify two more mainlines and operate them with class 87 and later class 90 and 91. Dieselisation was the single biggest mistake in the post war history of railway politics and even in the 1970s they did not change anything. Shame on them! 😠 An elderly friend of mine, a life-long railway enthusiast, said it best: "Of course I love the Deltics but they should never have been built." Same is true for the HST. Thank God electrification of the Great Western Mainline has just been completed from London to Bristol. That makes 3 mainlines (almost) entirely electrified. I totally understand that they went with diesel locos in the first 10-15 years after the war when Britain was heavily dependent on foreign loans and the false promise of "cheap oil" kinda hypnotized everybody. But since the 1960s dieselization was already obsolete. Roughly 60 years later Britain finally liberates itself from this historic mistake. Honestly, I can't wait to see one damn' class 43 after another being brought where they belong: One trainset for the railway museum and the rest, yes, TO THE SCRAP YARD!!!

[@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus]

I agree with the electrifcation augument and that cheap oil was an answer for evereything (London had the biggest Trolleybus system in the world but it was shut down by 1962 as it was cheaper for a diesel bus rather than modernise the system) but by 1970 when the APT was still very far from being developed BR needed another stop-gap. Due to the country's finances BR wasn't going to get much cash for stringing up the wires (even the northern end of the WCML was only granted by closing the Waverley route) so the HST was the right train at the right time. BR was loosing traffic to roads, the HST reversed that and grew Inter-City's revenue which ran at a profit by the mid 1980s. So the downer on this train you have is wrong, aim at the politicians who starved by of cash for investment, which Government called subsidy even if some of which was for improvements to the system!

[@MarioStahl1983]

@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Sure, don't get me wrong. Under the circumstances of the time the HST was the best thing they could do. It was (and still is) a fast, comfortable and popular train. What I hate is the false "Hooray" around it. "The fstaest diesel train in the world!". RIDICULOUS!! The only reason why it is the fastest diesel train in the world is that no other advanced nation built fast diesel trains anymore at the time.By the way: InterCity trains were (almost) ALWAYS profitable. InterCity connections on the WCML mith trains hauled by class 86 and 87 were profitable, too. Long before the HST was introduced. There are so many false narratives around this train. It's incredible. If you peel of theses myths you easily see what a symbol a failure this train was symbolizing a country in a (self inflicted) economic crisis. But, anyway. The HST was of course at least better than the diesel trains it replaced. I travelled on it myself many times.

[@noaerrr]

Sorry to burst your bubble but the hsts will keep going on Britain’s railways well into the 2030s. Gwr, cross country and Scotrail still use them.