Yesterday I was making a journey back from Manchester, and as luck had it a delayed Edinburgh service was due to leave SOONER than my initial connection at York, so I waited for that, expecting it to be a high speed service, but the sight that greeted me was just unreal, the train was an InterCity 125, nothing wrong with that you might think, but coupled to the front locomotive of this particular set was another locomotive, a class 67, it seemed the front 43 had more or less stopped working and only the brake and generator connections were of any good to the coaches, this kind of proved my point about the MTU engines all along, they are totally and utterly useless. Now the Germans are known for some things but the MTU 16V4000 was a BIG mistake, there’s a whole stash of Paxman 12RP200L “Valenta” engines in the hands of the 125 Group, maybe it’s time to refit them back to the whole fleet (except those with the 12VP185 as no reports of them having to have another loco pull the locos fitted with these has come to light), why oh why this happened is beyond me, the Class 43 would NEVER have had to have another locomotive to pull it had the engines not been replaced, take Grand Central, they kept the 12RP200L “Valenta” engines and they’ve had better luck, only thing they did was rewire a batch of Mark 3A Coaches to make them HST compatible, guess people will never learn that if they leave something alone it will work fine and need less servicing in the long run… NEW engine… NEW problems… OLD engine… NO problems eventually
Happy journeys on trains that actually DO work properly
