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The Push-Pull Mk3 sets were indeed the backbone of the Northern Suburban service for many years, in in my view they were an outstanding machine. To be fair though, a fully laden 6-peice rake was tough work was a 121. Whilst they could cope in such cases, their performance was nothing to get excited about and they rarely came anywhere close to their maximum 75mph speeds.

When the 201's displaced the 121's, the much more powerful "bricks" upped the performance of PP's significantly, but as Wilkinstown has already said, the fact that the driving trailers were rigged with DART bogies meant that these machines could still only max at 75mph,. and not 90 like their regular MK3 cousins.

One partilcular memory I have of a push pull was one being hauled by an 071 when a 201 wasn't available. In this case the loco had to run round and swap ends before commencement of each journey as no 071's were ever fitted for PP working. The 071 IMHO is far better suited to hauling the PP's and they certainly had far better traction than the slightly more powerful 201. The non fitting of PP control gear on the 071 was a big oversight.

Reliability of the PP's were also particuarly good, and failures were not common. Loco's rarely failed, as neither did the power doors. The were a few minor issues here and there with generators under DT or a brake valve here and there, but by and large they were reliable and dependable. It's kind of sad that these very capable machines could be mothballed ahead of their time and I agree with Dermo that they are still capable of giving many years of good service. I for one hope that consideration is given to redeploying these machines on the Belfast route if the service goes hourly, a role which they would be ideally suited - especially as the original LHB bogies have been replaced with the standard (BT22?) type.