#4115· Mark 3
British Rail Mark 3
🇬🇧 United Kingdom ·built by British Rail Engineering Limited· from 1972· Single-level rail passenger carriage
6 photos from Wikimedia Commons · credits & licences
- 1. Long Rock Sidings - GWR Mk3 RFB 10219: Geof Sheppard· CC BY-SA 4.0
- 2. IC125@40 - TS 42210 at York: Geof Sheppard· CC BY-SA 4.0
- 3. Sleeper Either Class: No machine-readable author provided. Our Phellap~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims).· CC BY-SA 3.0
- 4. British Rail Class 769: Jon David Houghton· CC BY-SA 4.0
- 5. Mark 3 Chiltern Railways: Vanmanyo· CC BY-SA 4.0
- 6. Mark 3 business zone chiltern: Vanmanyo· CC BY-SA 4.0
what is it?
The British Rail Mark 3 is a type of passenger carriage developed in response to growing competition from airlines and the car in the 1970s. A variant of the Mark 3 became the rolling stock for the High Speed Train (HST). Originally conceived as locomotive-hauled coaching stock, the first coaches built were for the prototype HST in 1972.
who runs it
base stats
Bars compare against all trains: 600 km/h (maglev), 1,700 seats; power, weight and number built on a log scale up to 20 MW, 1,000 t and 20,000 built.
fun facts
- First built 54 years ago, in 1972.
- Top speed is 1.5× a car on the Dutch motorway (130 km/h).
- At full speed it would cover Amsterdam–Utrecht (≈ 40 km) in 12 minutes.
- 23 m long: about 5 cars parked nose to tail.
- Still in service after 54 years.
carriage / wagon: Unpowered passenger coaches or freight wagons, pulled by a locomotive.
spec sheet
- built
- 1972
- in service from
- 1972
- status
- in service
- number built
- 848
- kind
- carriage / wagon
- origin
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- builders
- British Rail Engineering Limited
- operators
- Great Western Railway, Network Rail, ScotRail Trains (2022-), Royal Scotsman, British Royal Train, Abellio ScotRail (2015-2022)
- top speed
- 201 km/h
- power
- —
- gauge
- 1,435 mm standard gauge
- length
- 23 m
- Dutch name
- Mark 3
From the Wikipedia infobox and Wikidata. Blank means the sources don't say.
family
Sources: Wikidata Q2271383, Wikipedia: British Rail Mark 3 (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-25.