Well, my night on the Caledonian Sleeper is over, time to report on the experience.

As I said in my previous post, internally the train was spotless and my cabin, though a tad compact was very adequate. With two people in it though I feel that you would have to choreograph your moves as it really could be a bit cramped!

We departed Inverness bang on time and effortlessly slipped into the Highland darkness. The train follows the Highland Railway mainline through Aviemore to Perth, Gleneagles and Stirling before taking a left for Edinburgh, where the portions from Fort William and Aberdeen are attached. There were quite few station stops and as a result the ride was a bit jerky! Equally the attachment of extra carriages and a locomotive change at Edinburgh was, unavoidably a bit sleep interrupting!

The Mark 5 carriages rode well, very well in fact on the higher speed sections of line, particularly the West Coast Mainline South of Carstairs all the way to London Euston. On the Highland Mainline though they suffered with a lot of bogie noise and vibration. It does strike me these days that rolling stock design engineers seem to be able to manufacture vehicles that only do one thing well, but are incapable of coping with a variety of conditions…just a thought.

The bad news was that due to signalling track circuit failures in the Partick area, our train was delayed by 95 minutes waiting for the Fort William portion; not a major issue for me for my onward journey, but I’m sure that some people might have been annoyed. On the plus side though, Caledonian Sleepers give a very generous refund for this inconvenience so I’m really not complaining and you can’t blame the train operator for the infrastructure owner’s shortcomings!

A point I made in my previous post about top speeds was quite pertinent and noticeable with our delay. By using a combination of stopwatch and GPS, I was able to see that we travelled along at a steady 87mph, the top speed of the locomotive. Now allowing that the Caledonian Sleeper is timed at 80mph, the maximum possible recovery of lost time in running can only be less than 10% with a 7mph excess over timing; I guess thats the price you pay for using a class 92 locomotive that was originally designed for freight work.

A light breakfast of coffee, fruit juice and a sausage bap was served to me in my cabin and was very enjoyable.

Yes arrival at Euston was late, but on the plus side avoided the infamous London “rush hour!”

Would I do it again?
You bet I would!

Catch you soon,
Dookes