European Railroad Discussion > Not just the Pacers are meeting their maker

Sims Metals in Newport Docks in South Wales is a major destination of rolling stock bound for the great carriage shed in the sky. So far numerous Pacers, elderly class 313 EMUs and the first batch of class 315 EMUs from London have met their end there, but now 40+ year old former First Great Western HST trailers are also on the chopping block. Yesterday Rail Operations Group's (ROG) 57312 and 57305 took six standard class HST trailers into the docks. The cars have been stored at Long Marston in the South Midlands between Worcester and Oxford, they were picked up by ROG using two barrier vehicles, HST trailers have different electrical and coupling systems to ordinary loco hauled stock, hence the barrier vans.

1: Leaving Long Marston almost an hour late they had made up all but a few minutes by the time the ensemble nosed into view on the dock branch.
2: The ROG second man / ground staff unlocks the dock gates
3: After racing up and down the Great Western in and out of Paddington at up to 125 mph many times a day for 40+ years their last journey was at a much more sedate pace through the docks. 

This was the second batch of HST trailers Sims have received, they also took some Greater Anglia loco hauled Mk 3s too. It is sad to see, but when you talk to some of the engineers tasked with keeping these trains on the road they virtually all say that they have really reached the end. And this has been borne out by the cost and time over runs which WABCO has endured on the Great Western Castle and Scotrail Inter7Cities programmes, which are rebuilding HSTs with automatic sliding doors and PRM compliant toilets and forming 2+4 and 2+5 sets for intermediate type journeys, which used to be DMUs. The amount of corrosion uncovered when the rebuilding work started almost derailed the project. XC too are having their HST sets refashioned into 2+6 sets and are planning an extra set which will see more XC HST workings from May, which can't be a bad thing.

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Those Class 57 units certainly look good. Hopefully it will be a long while before they meet their maker.
Thanks for posting the excellent photos and interesting narrative.
ALLEN

Thanks for the photos, Nik. I know from fellow enthusiasts they get very weepy eyed over the scrapping of the Mk4s, but my friend at Neville Hill does explain how totally
knackered they are with rot and rust. I saw this heading south at Temple Hirst, a ScotRail HST heading to Ely. Not sure why. chris uk

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It is still so sad to see them go but its like putting your old dog or cat down, you have to do it ... :(:(:(

Ely is also being used for storage, I suspect those are old FGW trailers used by Scotrail while their Inter7City sets were being rebuilt at Doncaster.

krm152 Wrote:
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> Those Class 57 units certainly look good.
> Hopefully it will be a long while before they meet
> their maker.
> Thanks for posting the excellent photos and
> interesting narrative.
> ALLEN

ROG take great care with their loco fleet, 57312 looks particularly neat.