As for 47s, the cutoff was the January 1988 timetable change. Before that, 47s worked through to St.Blazey on the Speedlinks, with the 37s used only on local workings. After 1988 St.Blazey’s allocation went up from four to six, and 37s took over from 47s on all Speedlink workings in Cornwall, with two of the three trains rostered for pairs of them working through to Exeter. However, I did see two 47s (one in large logo grey and one in triple grey distribution) in 1990 when St Blazey were a couple of 37s short. There was a large logo blue one (47441) working off St Blazey in 1988 as well, so I guess 47s were never that rare.

I’m considering 1999 and 2002 as two seperate sequences, because there’s a lot of differences; in 2002 you can run Virgin’s ‘celebrity’ 47s, with 66s and 60s dominating freight and 67s on the mail workings, whereas 1999 was an Indian Summer for 37s, with 47s still handling the mail traffic.

Couple of thoughts…

Not sure I would like to re-use the same CDA’s in both modern & 80′s scenario’s, the look is pretty different to my eye, and by 2001 at least there were a lot with maroon framing and canopys.

There did seem to be quite a few Railfreight 47′s around as well, was there a “cut-off” when the 37′s took over the speedlinks, or were there certain duties rostered for distribution 47′s and others for St Blazey 37′s?

Suggest going loco hauled for 2002 cross country, the “finale” of class 47 haulage in the South West was a real feature of this year. I’m guessing Farish hasn’t done fag-packet MkII’s to let you do the FGW one either?

Another train for the 70′s one? What about a motorail service.