Midland Mainline

22/10/2023

Midland Mainline Rio HST power car 43162 waiting to depart from the newly constructed platform 13 on the east side of St Pancras Station. For a period platforms 11-13 were the interim home for Midland Mainline services. This helped to facilitate the conversion of the wonderful Victorian station into a shopping mall and champagne bar and to allow for the construction of platforms 1-4. Once these were built Midland Mainline services swapped over to their new platforms on the west side of the station which signalled the start of the new South Eastern High Speed services operating from platforms 11-13.

In the background is one of the St Pancras gasometers in its original prominent gasworks location adjacent to St Pancras Station before they were all disassembled to make way for the new St Pancras Square development. Three gasometers were reassembled in a new location on the opposite side of the Regents Canal adjacent to St Pancras Lock. Two of these are now swanky flats, the third is Gasometer Park, and all three gasometers can still be seen from the train on the approach to St Pancras Station.

squaremilehealthwalks.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/st-pancras-gasholders

02/04/2023

'We are family'. How the families that work together, stay On Train together...written by Debbie Louise.
March 2005 cover stars Ian Morrish, Johnny Brown, Leslie and Amanda Mclaren - Rest in Peace Amanda 🙏

18/03/2023

Twenty years ago this week Midland Mainline introduced its wonderful new livery.

30/05/2022

Midland Mainline celebrated its 10th birthday held at Makeney Hall in Derbyshire. Over 120 guests were given the red carpet treatment on arrival with a champagne 🍾 reception. After dinner people danced to a live band as the party continued on into the night.

Photo kindly uploaded by Lindsay Cooper.

12/05/2022

Midland Mainline 2004 relaunch:

Well respected Heidi Mottram OBE, CBE, (Operations Director of Midland Mainline) arriving at Derby Station on 43166 flying the MML leaping stag flag to the best loco soundtrack of a Valenta engine.

Superb photo courtesy of Ryan Tranmer.

08/01/2021

The class of 08/01/01 at the Aston Court Hotel - kindly uploaded by Neil Hoeg.

16/06/2020

The booking office at St Pancras Station was the first building completed and had a magnificent hipped glass and timber lantern roof, along with gothic Windows. All of this, including the wooden booking office can still be seen today as it was sympathetically converted into the restaurant & bar of the St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, albeit with a much darker atmosphere.

In this photo a black cab waits patiently through the doorway to the old St Pancras taxi rank.

26/05/2020

The influence that brought about the teal and tangerine dream for Midland Mainline's new identity by Saatchi and Saatchi Design.

The best new visual livery of all Britain’s early privatised train companies belonged to Midland Mainline. It looked new and attractive, yet paid subtle tribute to the golden age of the railways. The teal green area around the front of the HST had a very distinctive rounded bottom edge, along with three tangerine-orange bands that also ran along the bottom of the teal green portion. These wrapped onto the front of the HST, where they tucked down onto the lower part of the nosecone. Anyone who knows their railway history will have seen something like this before, in the stripes applied to the Coronation Scot class streamliners (shown below), operated in the inter-war years by the LMS, Midland Mainline’s distant ancestor on the Midland Main Line.

17/05/2020

For members of staff who'd like to see a few old faces (or in the case of this MML corporate video - young faces)...

HST refurbishment video kindly uploaded by Dave Meredith.

This corporate video was released by Midland Mainline to advertise it's new 'orange and teal' livery for it's HST fleet prior to it's press launch on the 10t...

14/05/2020

The Midland Mainline logo looking rather splendid on the emergency coupling door of HST power car 43089.

10/08/2019

Midland Mainline teal green still lives on along the route at two locations.

09/05/2019

Photo on display at the National Railway Museum - kindly uploaded by Mick Forecast.