While today Britain's railway is overwhelmingly about passengers (and, secondarily, bulk freight), historically it was about the movement of small items, too, and BR's express parcels business was a significant force right up until the 1980s.
In this next image, we see parcels being loaded onto a then-new InterCity 125:
Enough parcels, let's enjoy the same train snaking out of Leicester's station, the front facade of which you can just make out on the far side of the road bridge:
HSTs were, of course, the exception, and most of the (non-commuter) traffic looked much more like this, with a feeble Class 31 hauling a mixed rake of Mk2 air-conditioned and non-aircon stock:
So the arrival of the radically styled HST into that world was visually stunning
Britain had had nothing like this -- the old Blue Pullmans were the closest, and they reeked of pre-War design values:
Whereas the HST was unquestionably Modern:
This is not to decry what went before, and let's end with a glorious close-up of a Class 47, a Brush Type 4, gleaming at the platform waiting for the Right Away.
That shot also lets you see the rather fancy brass handles still being used on coaching stock doors.
2 comments:
I'm surprised to learn HSTs ever handled parcels traffic!?
Wouldn't they have had to ad a parcels coach to the set for that?
Never seen or heard of that before.
By the time fleet quantities of HSTs were introduced (the second half of the 1970s), express parcels traffic was in steep decline. But if you look at the blunt end of an original condition HST power car you'll see a separate set of doors and a window, for the guard's/parcels space.
The guards all complained at how pokey and unpleasant it was riding in the rough power cars, so the end standard class trailer in each set was subsequently converted to a guard's compartment, leaving the power car spaces largely unused (the express parcels traffic finally ceased in the 1980s, but you can see in the photo 3rd from top that the porter is loading boxes into a widened door at the end of a Mk3 coach, next to the power car, where the guard's compartment now was).
Who says this blog isn't educational?
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