SO much has changed with the High Speed Trains (HSTs) in the past five months.
Since RE321, when we published the Great Western Railway Castle diagrams for the December 2022-May 2023 period, the Department for Transport (DfT) has forced CrossCountry to relinquish its popular HST fleet, while GWR will now continue using its Castles in traffic beyond December, having originally planned to retain a handful for strategic reserve purposes.
This means that the prospect of no booked daily HST passenger duties outside Scotland, unless on a charter or at a heritage line, is now no longer the case, however the number of duties is diminishing.
Nevertheless, the number of Castle diagrams is dropping. In321, we detailed the trains that the