West Yorkshire PTE brought most of the Pacers in the world. They were the first PTE to order Pacers (141s), they then ordered 142s and followed it on with 144s. Then they off loaded most of them on other areas of the country and to other countries.
At least GMPTE and Merseytravel ordered a mixture of 142s and 150s.
Out of curiosity, do you know which of the 142s WYPTE ordered? I thought they were one of the few Northern area PTEs that didn't go for 142s (GMPTE had 142001-014, TWPTE ended up with 142017-22 when it lost its' five sponsored 143s, etc), because they had their 141s and 144s.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
And the South and Midlands got Sprinters as well with only a few lines in the South West getting Pacers to compliment them.
That sounds very much like a "them and us" attitude that is regularly touted when comparisons are made between rolling stock in "the north" and "the south". Yes other areas got Sprinters as well, which are also still being used in their original areas of operation, so Northern is no more hard done by than any of those other franchises in that respect, and the original point of
Chris Coopers' post was that it is currently little wonder that the Northern franchise isn't seeing new trains at the minute as the vast majority of the old train fleet was replaced at the same time (The South East had slammers of various different vintages, and has a much higher density of lines and frequency of services calling for much larger fleets of train, so naturally stock replacement takes place more often than once per a typical vehicle lifetime).
That said, the Pacers are definitely past it. Stock replacement shouldn't necessarily be a case of arbitrarily replacing trains when they reach a specific age, but based on the suitability and reliability of that rolling stock to operate the services they are used on, and as such, the Pacers are in desperate need of replacement, while 150s of a similar age sill have quite a lot of life in them IMO. Really, plans should have been in hand a decade earlier than they have been for all the electrification projects in the Northern area that are currently being discussed. The timescale for these works that has actually been realised is cutting it far too close to the wire.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
We had loco hauled slam door mk2s in service until the Northern franchise started in 2004. Settle-Carlisle, Manchester-Blackpool and Manchester-Altrincham-Chester being the last routes to see slam door stock.
Those loco-hauled services were re-introduced though in order to provide Northern with additional capacity, rather than being the legacy of years of loco hauled operation. Just like the FGW, ATW and Scotrail franchises have also done.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
There's been quite a few serious Pacer incidents in the last couple of years but none involving most other types trains on the British network.
Boris Johnson got Bendy Buses withdrawn from London by calling them a cyclist's death trap and had a lot less evidence to back up his claim than can be used to back up a death trap tag for Pacers. Why is it one rule for London and another for the North?
There's been quite a few incidents involving other types of train over the course of the last couple of years, although comparing the relatively small Pacer fleet to the entirety of the UK rail networks' rolling stock offers an unbalanced perspective anyway. There's been a cement mixer falling on an SWT 455, a Scotrail 156 derailing on the Oban line, a collision between a 156 and a tanker in Anglia, and if you go back a little further, the Grayrigg Pendolino derailment.
Admittedly though, a very large proportion of the Pacers' mishaps have been self inflicted, while all those examples I have detailed above were the fault of external factors.
