A railway sleeper service has run between Scotland and England since February 1873. Sleeping cars were initially introduced on the East Coast Route via Edinburgh and York, with the rival West Coast catching up in October of the same year. The status quo remained pretty much the same until 1988 when services were withdrawn on the East Coast and trains consolidated on the West Coast.

Following the privatisation of rail operations in the UK during the 1990’s, like all other passenger trains the Anglo – Scottish sleepers passed into private hands.

It was not a stunning success!

True, new Mark 5 rolling stock was procured to run the trains, though it’s introduction was somewhat troubled and painful. The first run of the new carriages arrived at it’s destination hours late and received great derision from the media! Then there was a period of poor and deteriorating industrial relations that did little aid reliability nor reputation.

Finally in October 2022, the Scottish Government, possibly out of despair, announced that the franchise, then run by Serco, would be terminated and the operation taken over by Scottish Rail Holdings, a Government Owned Department from June 2023. Since then the service has stabilised and is beginning to rebuild it’s reputation.

The Mark 5 carriages are still a bit of a mixed bag and it is fair to say that they give the maintenance engineers headaches at time, but overall are settling into reliable performers.

Two trains are operated on six days each week. The “Highland Sleeper” is made up of three trains that depart from Inverness, Fort William and Aberdeen, then combine at Edinburgh and travel onward to London Euston as a 16 coach train. A “Lowland Sleeper” train has two portions serving Glasgow and Edinburgh, also to London.

The trains normally operate at a maximum speed of 80 mph (130 km/h), but are authorised to travel at 100 mph (160 km/h) where line speeds permit and if the train has been significantly delayed. Though as the locomotives used are not permitted to run any faster than 90mph, I find this to be a tad perplexing! It’s the old railway operator in me!

North of Edinburgh the trains are all hauled by diesel locomotives and South from there by electric traction.

My Inverness portion of the train tonight consists of six sleeper coaches, one seated carriage and one “club car” (lounge car).  Up front we have two Class 73/9 Electro-Diesel locomotives, 73. 970 and 73 967, old friends from my days on the Southern Region, though unlike me, they has been through a complete rebuild and now boast a 1600hp V8 engine each, which is an improvement over it’s original 650hp one. So 3200hp for a load of 305tonnes should do the job!

I’ll check out the electric loco when we get to Euston, I’m not getting out of bed at Edinburgh just to see it!

My berth, a solo Club cabin, is well appointed with an ensuite toilet and shower adjacent to the bedroom. In the past, the old Mark 1 sleeping cars had lovely wide windows that you could open and enjoy the mountain air as the train traversed the Highland railways; sadly now that facility has gone, but the air conditioning is much nicer than the old draughty sleeping cars!

I enjoyed a relaxing hour in the Caledonian Sleeper Lounge at Inverness with complementary refreshments before wandering over to the platform and getting comfy in my cabin.
I’m really looking forward to this trip, it must be nearly 30 years since I was on a sleeping train…

Catch you in the morning!

Dookes