Shunting the Scottish sleepers

[nightstar.train]

On my long boring drive home from Warley yesterday I was wondering how they shunt the Scottish sleeper trains.

 

At Carstairs it looks to me like the Edinburgh portion could come round the sharp corner from the Edinburgh direction, through the up platform, then back down onto the Glasgow portion if that was waiting in the down platform. Not sure what they’d do in reverse if they want to keep the half sets in the same orientation.

 

I’ve no idea what happens at Waverley.

 

And what about shunting in London? I know they shuffle the coaches around so that they can rotate back to the maintenance depot, used to be Inverness but now I think it’s mostly done at Polmadie. Do they take coaches or whole sets for a trip around London to turn them, or do they not mind if the brake end and buffet are the wrong way around?

[scottishlocos]

Hi

 

At Warverley the train is split in 3 Aberdeen and Inverness portions leave first leaving the portion for Fort William which has a Day Coach/coaches added this is done by the loco which will haul the train north

 

Sorry not sure how it works at Carstairs or at the London end

[caradoc]

At Carstairs the process is as you thought (and the same as when daytime trains combined there): The Edinburgh portion will normally run through the station into the Up Passenger Loop (UPL); Both the UPL and the Up Main Line have Down direction fixed red signals at the Glasgow end for this move, and is then propelled onto the rear of the Glasgow portion.

[GKPC]

When coming north the Edinburgh portion is on the back when leaving Euston. At Carstairs another locomotive just drops onto the rear of the train and works the train through to Edinburgh. 

 

This year I have had both class 90 and 92 working the Edinburgh portion from Carstairs.

 

The southbound train has done exactly as stated in the post above.

[luckymucklebackit]

After sitting for  while at Waverley, the Edinburgh portion works ECS to Polmadie for servicing

 

This document gives full details of the trains (The document is undated but looks to be about 10 years old)  http://www.fofnl.org.uk/archives/HITRANS_Sleeper_Operations_Report.pdf  This page dates from 2017 http://www.scot-rail.co.uk/page/Caledonian+sleepers

 

Jim