Today's story is dedicated to the removal of the HSTs from the CrossCountry fleet. Today's story begins at Newport (South Wales), where a CrossCountry HST, with power cars 43285 & 43304, had just arrived after terminating from Plymouth via Birmingham New Street. These sets were getting rather old, and the services they would operate were usually replaced by Class 170 Turbostars or Class 220 / 221 Voyagers. Tom Joyner, CrossCountry's managing director, had decided to re-allocate their Class 43 HST fleet to the less busier services such as Bournemouth - Manchester Piccadilly, helping out during Peak and Off Peak times.
Mr Tom Joyner, was chatting to Network Rail's Chief Executive, Andrew Haines, whilst on break and had both agreed that the HSTs should be reallocated to the Leeds - Plymouth & Edinburgh, due to the increased arrival of Class 220/221 Voyager units, which were being withdrawn by Avanti West Coast in preparation for the new Class 805 & 807 Evero units. CrossCountry had been inspecting their HST coaching stock, travelling from Leeds - Wakefield Westgate, trialling their Mk3 Coaches, checking their passenger comfort in both Standard Class and First Class. They were proven to be shaky, uncomfortable and had bad suspension, the Mk3 coaching stock was all taken to Alfie's Garage (Network Rail) where Alfie and the crew were trying their very hardest to refurbish the coaches, but unfortunately they couldn't succeed.
They decided to scrap the scheme of restoring the coaches to their original quality, and Rail Operations Group Class 37, 37901 shunted them into the sidings atReading Traincare Depot, where they were stored in different sections, Sidings 1&2 for the Standard Class coaches, Siding 5 for the First Class coaches and Sidings 3&4 for the Power Cars. If no-one collected them, they'd be going for scrap at Newport SimsGroup. Soon, a Mexican company called Mexican Rail had purchased 30 HST Power Cars, some XC, some GWR, some InterCity, some LNER and some EMR, along with their corresponding coaches. The whole lot was sold for a whopping £250,000. 'At least they're not going for scrap' said Darren Gates, one of CrossCountry's drivers. 43321 & 43357 were sold to Colas Rail for £5,000 to help ex Network Rail 43013 & 43014. 321 & 357 were sent to Alfie's Garage (Network Rail) to have their Cross Country logo and vinyls removed, and a big Colas 'Double Diamond' placed on each side. And that is the end of XC's Class 43 HSTs, on the CrossCountry Mainline.
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The Wales & Borders Railway
Short StoryBased on Thomas & Friends, but is in wales with different characters, engines and vehicles still talk, but don't have faces
