Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: HST

This is the first of a series of short railfan videos that I took out of train windows while traveling from Cardiff to Prague. "Railfan" is an important qualifier here. I didn't expect any of these videos to be spectacular by themselves, Instead, they're aimed primarily (maybe only) at railfans who like to watch high-speed train videos. Technically, in modern terms, these Intercity 125 diesel trains, introduced in 1976, aren't high-speed in the modern sense. This is because their maximum legal speed is, and has always been, 125 m.p.h., or about 200 km/h, while the threshold for modern high-speed trains is about 210 km/h, set by the Japanese Series 0 bullet trains in 1966. However, the Series 0 bullet trains ran at 200 km/h from 1964 to 1966, and when the Intercity 125 diesel trains were being developed by British Railways in the 1970s, they were referred to as, literally, "High Speed Trains," or HSTs. Today, they're still often called HSTs, and remain some of the fastest diesel trains in the world, 39 years after being introduced to regular service.

This was my train, still worked by an Intercity 125 after all these years. These trainsets date to 1976, but in some respects they're still the most advanced diesel passenger trains in the world. At the moment, I'm also unaware of anything faster than them, although some DMU's and ICE-TD variants can match them.

This is yet another renovation of the BR-era Intercity 125's interior, this time for First Great Western. I was taking this train directly to Cardiff from London Paddington.

This was the first of many trains I had to take to get home to Prague, this one being an Intercity 125 for London Paddington. I never got the number, but on magnifying the photo I'm fairly certain that this lead Class 43 power unit was #43192.

I took this as we were arriving into Paddington, and reflections off the safety glass or not, I still like it. I have no idea about the numbers of the trains this time, of course.

This was my train to Cardiff, on the left. It's obviously a rebuilt Intercity 125, but I don't remember if this was one of the reengined ones.