Do HST sets require turning?

[rogerzilla]

The GWML HSTs normally ran with coach "A" at the Bristol end and first class at the London end - if you're paying that much for a ticket, you don't want to walk any further than you have to at Paddington - but very, very occasionally one would turn up the other way around, so from this I assume they were turned sometimes.

 

I once saw an HST with a failed power car pull away from Didcot Parkway.  It was slooooooow.  I wonder if they stuck it on the relief line to keep it out of the way of freight trains?

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, rockershovel said:

I had not realised there were so many places on the U.K. network where a train could be reversed or turned! I seem to remember that one of the East Coast resorts requires reversing the train into the station - Yarmouth? 

 

Not sure about Great Yarmouth unless it is somehow connected with loco-hauled workings.  The units have a cab at both ends and the regular loco-worked sets are topped-and-tailed.

 

There are, or have been, places where booked reversals occur into terminal platforms.  Inverness is one.  The last up Far North each day used to run past the station on the Rose Street Curve and reverse into the "south" side rather than trap the locomotive in the "north" side platforms.  There was a similar working in from Aberdeen which ran past and reversed into the Far North platform.  These were for stock turning purposes I believe but it helped that a locomotive wasn't trapped at the buffers and could be released to the shed without a further shunt move.