WillPS wrote:Just because you are so obsessed with yourself that you can't see the point doesn't mean there isn't one.
I'm fairly sure this exchange started off with you summarising something I said as something I didn't, and going to the trouble of calculating the word count as if that somehow added gravitas to your put down. Whilst this (frankly quite boring) trading of hand bags at 20 paces could go on for some time, I will summarise it myself as 'anyway...'
WillPS wrote:As for seating... well, replace it? They've got another 10 years in them, surely?
At the expense of agreeing with his lordship, why don't they just replace the seats on them? It's the same thing Wessex did with the /2's when the issues with sending a 150 on a 5 hour journey with the interiors they had were noted and sorted.
Northern actually began replacing their Pacers around a decade ago after receiving a significant number of 158s displaced directly and indirectly by TransPennine Express' new 185s and newish 170s. They sat in the sidings in Blackpool awaiting their fate. FGW, desperate for stock, took a dozen of them. Northern, desperate for stock themselves given the massive growth on their network, took the remaining ones back.
It was long the plan that 3 units would be scrapped following the conversion of the Oldham line to Metrolink. When the Oldham Loop shut in 2009 a trio of Pacers which were funded by GMPTE went in to storage for all of 2 weeks before returning to bolster services which had seen a massive rise in patronage following the loop's closure. Now the Oldham line has a regular Metrolink service, and still those 3 units remain in service.
The final piece of the story being that when FGW got their 150/1s and sent the 142s back, they didn't go to storage or the scrap yard but instead were pressed back into immediate service with Northern (I believe literally within a day of arriving back in the North) where they all remain. So basically, Northern's attempt at retiring only a small number of pacers have failed
WillPS wrote:Well there's a competitive tender out which specifically rules out the use of stock without bogies in the Northern franchise.
I repeat, these are knackered, life expired trains. There is no need to fear their demise.
I don't think anyone is seriously scared of a pacerless future (although I believe some examples should survive into preservation to show future generations the shit we've had to travel on), it is more that they are better than nothing, and if Northern/future franchise holder is seriously going to retire over a hundred units in 4 years time, the replacement plan should already be in place, not something merely being proposed by a franchise application.
The Class 230 / 'd stock refurb' is hardly any better. They are more fuel efficient than pacers, have the potential to be outshopped as larger sets with more capacity, but they are even older than pacers and slower. Given that pacers and 150s currently work diagrams where they could really do with being able to go faster than 75MPH (although of course that would be a truly terrifying experience in a pacer), how on earth is a 60MPH unit progress?
The Class 230 is IMO simply going to be a case of one shit train replaced with another. It may well be intended as a stopgap solution - but that's what pacers were supposed to be and they are still here 30 years later.
