Class 43 Intercity 125 HSTs in TS

The UK's class 43, also known as 'Intercity 125' or High Speed Train (HST) has got to be one of the most successful trains in the entire history of British Rail and as it celebrates forty years of service this year, I thought i'd go through my collection and publish some pictures. However, I realised that the collection was much bigger than I thought and so decided to put them all together in this guide to showcase this remarkable train.

It was conceived in the mid 1970s as a stop gap to give BR a high speed train that could improve it's mainline services while the futuristic Advanced Passenger Train (APT) was being developed. Up until this point, all mainline services were traditional loco' hauled services that ran upto 100mph so even though it didn't do the 150 mph the APT was supposed to, it was still a vast improvement, bringing new levels of speed and refinement to the UK's rails. The APT project ended in failure however so the HST became the flagship for British Rail.

This isn't meant to be a full, in depth history of the HST, more of a guide is to show just how many liveries and variants that are available in Train Simulator and a brief description of each one.

First generation, the Intercity years

The HST was launched with the standard BR Blue and Grey livery but it's powercars were very distinctive in having the yellow front carried down the sides. This unique livery helped the 'Intercity 125' become a recognisable brand in it's own right and it's modern and high tech image helped drag the underfunded BR out of the '70's. Most people who have any UK content for TS have this set as it comes with the 'European Assets Pack' that is bundled with many routes.

It's also interesting to note that the original powercars had rear windows either side of the gangway door and an auxilery driving position to aid shunting, however this was removed on facelifted models.

By the early 1980's, the livery was updated to help make the Intercity 'brand' more separate, replacing the old BR blue entirely and this is sometimes refereed to as the 'Executive' livery,

This was short lived however and by the mid '80's the yellow sides had gone and the new Intercity Swallow livery became the standard. This livery was also used for all other Intercity services including the brand new class 89, 91 and later, class 90. The powercar on the right in this picture is actually one of the units converted into a 'DVT' for use on the tail end of the new electric services on the East Coast Mainline, easily identified by the removal of the lower valance and retrofitting of buffers to enable easy shunting. These worked in 'push pull' formation with the new class 91 as the Mk4 coaches and DVTs were not ready when the the class 91 was launched.

Post Privatisation, The Western Region

British Rail was privatised in the mid 1990s and the Intercity network was broken up and services sold to many different operators. This resulted in a dramatic re-branding all over the UK of the HST fleet, one of the first being the services from London to Wales and the SouthWest, Great Western Trains.

I think this is a very smart livery indeed, a shame it only lasted for two years before the First Group bought out their partners and re-branded it 'First Great Western', adding a a gold stripe and the First logo to signify the change. This was only meant to be temporary and was soon replaced by the so called 'Barbie' livery,
By the late 2000's, the FGW HST's got a full refurbishment including the new 'neon' livery and the fitment of new light clusters.

In late 2015, First Group decided to rebrand as simply 'Great Western Railway' or 'GWR' and started rolling out a brand new, almost all dark green livery on all it's services including the HSTs. In my opinion, this is a huge improvement and looks very classy indeed with raised three dimensional GWR lettering on the real powercars and a simple livery with a dark stripe on each coach.

East Coast Mainline

The other major franchise that the HST ran on was the East Coast mainline from Kings Cross to the north and Scotland. Initially, the service was run by GNER (Great North Eastern Railways) and the HST's along with the class 91's were branded in a very classy looking dark blue livery with a red stripe.

In 2007 however, GNER lost the franchise and it was awarded to 'National Express'. Initially, they were re-branded with a white stripe over the red one with the Nation Express logo on it before each set was eventually repainted grey and white.

Unfortunately, this only lasted for two years as NatEx defaulted on their franchise at the end of 2009 and the opperation of the line reverted to the Department of Transport who re-branded it simply as 'East Coast', firstly by just replacing the Nation Express text and later by repainting in all over grey,

March 2015 saw the line finally revert to the private sector with a joint venture run by Stagecoach and Virgin Trains. Oddly, the entire operation has been branded as 'Virgin Trains East Coast' (VTEC) even though Virgin Trains themselves only have a 10% stake in the venture. Here you can see an example of temporary re-branding, apparently just done with vinyl wrap applied before each set can be repainted properly,

The full livery looks like this and very smart it is too I think! However, this will be a short lived as VTEC are due to replace all their HSTs with the new Class 801s from 2018,

Other regions

While Great Western and the East Coast are the main operators of the Class 43, there are still several other operators, past and present.

Of course, VTEC is not the first time Virgin have had their branding on an HST, here you can see an example of their earlier Virgin Trains West Coast livery, mostly seen in the north west and midland areas, on mainline and Virgin Cross Country routes,

In 2006, the Cross Country franchise was awarded to the Arriva Group and was initially run by the Virgin stock with the Virgin branding removed, as you can see above. It was then replaced with this brand new livery, one of the best so far used on the HST in my opinion. Here one of the new liveried sets can be seen next to a previous Virgin Cross country unit that still retains it's buffers after being converted into a DVT in the early '90s.

Another example of previous 'DVT buffer sets' that were re converted back to proper powercar use is Grand Central, who won the right to run services from Kings Cross to Sunderland in 2007. They are unusual in having an all 'buffer' fleet, operating 3 sets of HSTs, all of which were formally buffer equiped DVTs that had been in storage for a few years before being recommissioned to service,

The livery is simple and classy and the later one features an orange stripe along the entire length of the train,

Midland Mainline ran fast and semi-fast passenger services from London to the East Midlands and Yorkshire,

As part of some of the franchises being restructured in 2007, they were merged with some of Central Train's services to form East Midlands Trains. These can still be seen running services to the north from St Pancras today,

The Future

It's amazing to think that a train designed over forty years ago is still in front line service in such numbers today, however, most of the HSTs in the UK are due to be replaced by 2020, mostly by the Class 801 made by Hitachi. However, the old girl will still live on, it has already been confirmed that several sets will be shortened to four or five cars and transferred to Abellio Scotrail and be refurbished with new holding tanks for the toilets and plug automatic doors instead of the current slam doors. These will then be used on routes north of Edinburgh and Glasgow where electrification has not taken place and no doubt will see fifty years in service, if not more.

The final oddity is the Network Rail New Measurement Train (NMT), referred to by railfans as the Flying Banana. The train consist of four Mk3 coaches and two powercars and measures the contact between rails, wheels and the overhead electric supply line. Lasers and other instruments are used to make other measurements of the track geometry and other features such as overhead line height and stagger, and the track gauge, twist and cant.

This will be around for the foreseeable future so even once the Class 43 has been withdrawn from service in England, this very conspicuous set will put in the odd rare appearance!

There is also another branch of the HST family that I thought was worth a mention, the 'XPT'. Short for Express Passenger Train it is the main long-distance passenger train operated by NSW TrainLink on regional railway services in New South Wales, Australia. The XPT is based on the High Speed Train and entered service in April 1982. They had downrated Valenta engines and reduced gearing to give a top speed of around 99 mph. After a couple of refurbishments, most of these units are still in service, although a grant was given in 2015 to develop a replacement. Unfortunately, I do not know of any models in for TS2016, although there were some produced for MSTS.


I hope you've enjoyed my rundown of all the HST's available in Train Simulator, if I have missed anything out, please do tell me and I can add it to the collection. All comments welcomed below.

HST on Film

If you'd like to learn more, there are two great documentaries that are well worth a watch, the first was made before privatisation,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1EK1Md5-mc

This second film was made after the HST had been in service for 25 years,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyjH9rWOcSM

[Lord Haart]

My favourite train of all time.

[ivarjackharris]

How do I download this HST Pack

[Victor4815]

i need logo virgin for ap valenta 43 please help me

[MiniCydonianKnight]

ca

[MiniCydonianKnight]

carlos

[pauljennion]

Correction 10:50am Paignton to Manchester Piccadilly, not 10:40am, sorry for any errors.

[pauljennion]

My first ride on a HST was on Friday, 5th - October - 1984, on my home spending a week on Holiday in Torbay, which was the 10:40am Paignton to Manchester Piccadilly changing at Birmingham New Street for Liverpool Lime Street & Crewe. my last ride on a HST was last year from Newton Abbot to Penzance on a day to Lands Ends, Wednesday, 26th - June - 2019, they're such a Icon still the fastest Diesels in The World. I will really miss them when they're finally withdrawn from service with other operators.

[Metro North Foamer]

It's like the AEM-7 or the F40PH, even though they were both retired 3 and 20 years ago, respectively. Some F40s remain in commuter service, many are preserved. Two AEM-7s are also preserved. Will they preserve a train set or two of the HST? The HST is arguably one of my favorite diesels, even though I am an American.

[Brutalist Ape]

What a nice summary. Even I found the section on different liveries very interesting. In the 2000s things seemed to change so fast, I admit I was confused about the order in which the livery changed from the Barbie to the "Neon" blue. Glad this article has cleared that up for me. And in my opinion, the best liveries were the Intercity 'raspberry ripple' livery of the 1990s, and the 'Great Western' green and white from the late 90s. A lovely colour scheme and what a shame it was cut short by the dreadful Barbie livery. Glad that they're back in green now, although sad that they'll be disappearing by 2020. The replacement trains are not as good, in my opinion.

[JJTimothy]

Beg to differ about the APT. It was a PR failure because the prototype trains were pushed into service after little testing and, surprise surprise, proved unreliable- the resultant savaging by an ill-informed media gave BR the willies and it stopped talking about the project altogether but extensive passenger carrying tests later in the '80s went very well. As a research project it was a great success influencing almost every high speed train in the world (including the IC125) and, although not actually called an APT, the brand having been poisoned by the press, the Class 91+Mark 4 coach sets introduced in the late '80s and still going strong, are production APTs in all but name.