Loco Hauled Passenger
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The loco hauled passenger train is a real rarity in the UK these days but it wasn't always so. The word "passenger" has been loosely interpreted to mean trains formed of coaching stock including parcels and mail trains as well as empty stock workings, test trains and unit drags. HSTs and similar are excluded.
Many different loco classes worked passenger trains from the 1960s to the 1990s and, in the days before the internet, these trains were far easier to predict than freights as they ran to a published timetable. This made them a natural target for photography. The problem was that their numbers were declining rapidly.

The introduction of HSTs in the mid-1970s was the first major blow. While they're looked on with affection now, they weren't at the time, as they replaced loco hauled passenger trains on several major routes. Next came the Sprinters in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, replacing loco hauled passengers on important secondary routes such as the West Highland, Cardiff - Portsmouth and Liverpool - Scarborough. By the late 1990s privatised operators were promising new trains to replace most of the remaining loco haulage. Pendolinos on the WCML and Cross Country Voyagers just about finished the job off a few years into the new century.

Fortunately a few pockets of loco haulage remained. Electric locos held on in East Anglia until 2020 and a few are still active on the ECML. Sleeper services are also still loco hauled although there aren't many of them these days. Then there were the stand-ins for DMU shortages in Cumbria and East Anglia, unikely to be repeated in the post-pandemic era on a railway awash with new trains. The loco hauled passenger train isn't extinct in Britain but it's certainly an endangered species.
page : 1008
WK000 : 2024-02-29
CS000 : 2022-08-03
CK000 : 2024-02-29
GS000 : 2022-07-27
GK000 : 2024-02-29








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