The testing and commissioning of the units was mainly carried out on the WR, out of Paddington and Old Oak Common but one unit visited Scotland I was not involved as I was still working for R&DD at the time.

After arriving at Haymarket Depot in mid October 1983, the DEMU operated on the Edinburgh - Stirling - Perth diagram (normally operated by a 47/7 and Mk2 Push-Pull set) for two weeks from Monday 17th October.

For the next two weeks from 31st October the Class 210 unit ran on Edinburgh - Dundee services in place of one of the loco hauled trains.

On Monday 14th November, the DEMU ran ECS from Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street and then formed the 09.50 to Fort William and 14.15 return in place of the usual locomotive hauled set.

The following day it worked a special service from Glasgow Queen Street to Inverness, departing at 08.54 and returning to Glasgow at 16.05.

This completed its trials in Scotland and the prototype DEMU returned as ECS to Reading depot on 16th November.

The above information is from the excellent Scot-rail site at http://www.scot-rail.co.uk/page/Class+210

210001 was a four car version, and 210002 was a three car. Each one had an above floor diesel engine of over 1000 BHP in one driving vehicle and were capable of 90mile/h. The principal behind the unit was to develop a diesel-powered train with the performance to match an EMU such as the class 317 hence the large engine required for fast acceleration.

The two sets were equipped with different power units, unit 210002 having the Paxman 6RP200L of 1,125hp in the Driving Motor Brake Second  with electrical equipment by Brush and 210001 had an MTU 12V396 TC11 unit of 1,140hp in the Driving Motor Second with electrical equipment by GEC.

210001 comprised vehicles 60201 ,60401, 60400 and 60300

210002 comprised vehicles 60200, 60450 and 60301

Although the performance was excellent, virtually a whole coach was sacrificed for the power unit and ultimately the option for a fleet was not taken up.

Unfortunately the units proved to be too expensive and wasteful of passenger space and the concept of marrying a high performance diesel train to an EMU was not pursued so they were eventually withdrawn in the late 1980's.The two driving trailers (and the intermediate trailer of the three car set together with one trailer from the four car set) were used in the Class 457 Networker development train. There was a plan for a driving motor also to be saved but, after the storage of the two of them at Eastleigh they were scrapped in 2003.

One of the TSO's is currently in class 455 set 455912 but the other two have been scrapped.