The RCTS: then and now
IN THE April 2012 issue of The Railway Observer, a Class 158 is featured approaching Honington on February 10, 2012 working the 11.45 Nottingham to Skegness. But there is nothing new about cross-country and inter-city diesel multiple units. Several classes of these DMUs were built by the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, and by British Railways’ Swindon Works, from the late 1950s into the 1960s. However, whilst the Class 158s may not necessarily offer a great deal more speed than their forebears, they are far superior in terms of both ride and comfort. The units were built at British Rail Engineering Limited’s Derby Litchurch Lane Works between 1989 and 1992, with the first unit entering service on September 17, 1990 with ScotRail for use on services between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley, Aberdeen and Inverness. Regional Railways gained the lion’s share of the units and they became a familiar site across the network. In particular, they were noted on longdistance trans-Pennine services in the north of England, as well as regional services in the Midlands, Wales and the South West. InterCity used a small fleet on services from the North West to Scotland and Portsmouth. Following Privatisation in 1997, it was inevitable that change would occur. When ScotRail introduced Class 170s in 1999, the Class 158s were cascaded to secondary routes such as the Far North Line. By the mid-2000s, the Class 158s had become ‘maids of all work’, being used on everything from local rural services to long distance journeys. Transport for Wales (and its three predecessor companies) initially used the units for services from South Wales to North West England, North Wales, Cornwall and London Waterloo. Again the units were cascaded (and some returned to the leasing company) when the Class 175s were acquired. The ‘158s’ were allocated to Machynlleth Depot for work on the Cambrian Line. In the East Midlands, the Class 158s were utilised on Norwich to Liverpool Lime Street services, but were quickly superseded by Class 170s. They then found use on secondary services. Currently East Midlands Railway is replacing its ‘158s’ with ‘170s’. On the current Great Western Railway, Class 158s are used on the Bristol to Portsmouth line. In addition, they are also used on services from Exeter St David’s to Plymouth and Penzance, Taunton to Portsmouth Harbour, Great Malvern to Weymouth, and Exeter to Barnstaple. In the North, the units are used on Northern’s trans-Pennine services and many other services within Yorkshire. On the South Western Railway, ‘158s’ operate alongside the Class 159s on the Exeter St David’s to London Waterloo service. Virgin CrossCountry had a small fleet of the units that operated from Swindon to Birmingham via Stroud. These were gradually replaced by ‘Voyagers’. Despite various unit cascades and replacements, Class 158s are still very much part of today’s railway scene, and appear regularly in the pages of both The Railway Observer and The Railway Magazine.