Hull Trains to Lease a FGW HST....

[ArrivaTrains]

... at weekends.

Now, i'm no fully sure when this will occur, but it will happen before the end of the summer. Hull trains drivers will start traction training shortly, followed by 'on-board' crews soon afterwards.

Basically, the HST (only 1 I believe, so far) will run from Old Oak Comon on (early) Saturday mornings and work HT services to/from Hull that day. It will stable overnight on Saturday, in Hull (platform 7), then run back to London on Sundays, returning to O.O.C on Sunday nights. FGW has spare HST capacity at the weekends, so this is why the lease will be happening. It has already been agreed at boardroom level, withing "Firstgroup".

Hull trains will be able to carry out more maintenance on the 180s at the weekend, because of this - hopefully lessening "failures" in the process

Anyway, make of it what you will

[AlistairW]

Sounds like a very expensive mess to me that will be passed on to their currently loyal passenger base. Thanks for the post though.

[6rdfar90]

Does HT have enough passengers to fully utilise even one HST set??

[phill70]

If its for 180 maintenance, it does not really matter if they fully utilise the HST, or not.

[6rdfar90]

It's not... But still... Thought they would have tried getting some traction they could come close to filling really...