Pacers: The End

I remember the Cravens 105s, which were truly horrid. A Met-Camm 101 was heaven compared to those, yet one day I want to ride in the restored 105...

 

As a Child I loved the 105s and 104s which were the mainstay of the wherry lines out of Norwich in the late 70s early 80s (if I'd been a bit more observant and into DMUs I'd have spotted others I think) and was really disappointed when we got refurbed 101s (from Kettering my memory tells me). When 156s were brought in for the Norwich services via Peterborough to the the midlans we thought they were the dogs' b.....s

 

Norwich - Birmingham is what I remember the 105s from, plus the odd run late evening/night from Hitchin to Peterborough.

 

I rode on a 144 this morning on Huddersfield to Leeds via Halifax and very icy conditions at 06:30am in morning, going round Greetland jct to Salterhebble wheels screeching like mad on the 45 degree curves and under Shibden tunnel not half rattling away and letting the dam drafts in, hardly no heat on on my way from Brighouse to Low Moor and under Wyke tunnel. For 40 odd year old railbuses there still fairly nifty but more often than not nowadays on our locals dmu class 158 90,s and 153,s and Leyland sprinters and 150,s but not been on any of the scot rail fleet 170 class that have come to W. Yorks yet.

 

Well, we've done it again (no not that), Leeds to Morcambe and return,,,,,,,,,142 Pacer. Northern are running 170's on all stations local work, TP Express are running a few 180 sets on all stations local work, and Northern are still getting as much revenue out of the heaps of misery that masquerade as DMU's on cross country work as they can.
Interior decor ?? delicate patches of bare rusty metal , wheel flats ?? oh yes, spectacular wheel flats, think of poorly maintained jointed track, wheel flats giving a VERY good impression of a square wheel and you will begin to get the picture. Toilet ?? oh yes........if you were brave. Poor old Mrs V was almost in tears when it spilt her drink with all the bouncing about.......like a small boat on a rough sea.
And then, joy of joys, we got a repeat performance on the return journey.
I watched two cars each going their own way and marvelled at how the coupling between the cars stood up to the 'hammer' it was getting.

 

Thankfully I very rarely have to do Lancaster-Leeds these days, but it never ceased to amaze me that northern persisted in using Pacers on the route, the combination of distance an jointed rail from Settle Jnc to Carnforth make it something of a journey of attrition.

Don't think the wheel flats issue is limited to the 142's, hearing them regularly pass it sounds like many of the 156's and 158's are similarly square wheeled!

 

Anyone know why some of the first generation DMUS like the 101s, 108s etc weren't kept in preference to pacers. Was it just down to reducing costs or were there other reasons as clearly these units were better than pacers. ?

 

Asbestos maybe?

 

In the subject of ‘what might have beens’ it is a shame that the 210 was never developed to a production run. Mind you a sign of the times, I am not sure that you could design and build a one off prototype these days.

 

Was much better with 45025 and eight Stanier coaches on the 07.40 ex Morecambe 'Residential Express!' Split at Skipton, first four continue to Bradford. Tankie on the back four to Leeds. Happy days!

 

I think paranoia over the crash-worthyness of MK1 based stock was probably the main reason (although the odd serious incident involving a pacer has revealed that they are as bad or worse than a MK1 for body/underframe separation).

While the travelling public would almost certainly take a 101 over a 14x or 15x generation unit, they were old tech - e.g. Vac brakes, slam doors, and bean counters care about such things (unlike the public, who like comfy seats, and big windows they can open).

 

Never mind, hopefully you will be luxuriating in a comfy seat on 3rd March and some lovely Deltic sound.

Dave B

 

Well, there's a thing. Yes I would book in a heartbeat BUT..............Tornado is advertised but not confirmed (It hasn't done a mainline loaded test). I did bookon the one that got 'postponed' and I got a full refund. You know who was very disappointed and I don't want another postponed job.
Wakefield To Scotland with Tornado and Alycidon on a spring Sunday...........what's not to like...............but I daren't book.

 

The Cravens were staple fare on my end of the GN. A poor alternative to the loco hauled trains to and from Cambridge and were to be avoided where possible. A late night, all shacks KGX - Hitchin was a slow old affair in one of those. Smelly, noisy and rattly.

 

In the twilight of the Deltics we'd change at Huntingdon from/to a 105 - more often a 101 thankfully - but what a contrast. Full bore thrash down the ECML in Mk.2 comfort and then the relative torture of a 105 back to Hitchin.

 

Yes, asbestos but also -
crash resistance ( think of a wooden shed with thin metal cladding held on the chassis by a few bolts and lots of rust and some paint),
spares for engines and gearboxes becoming hard to get (30 year old engines designed for buses),
corrosion,
poor reliability,
poor performance,
poor braking, ( nothing wrong with vacuum brakes but not as effective as airbrakes.)
heaters which when working blew diesel fumes into the passenger accomodation,
loathed by any drivers who regularly worked locos or emu's.

To their credit they did have working toilets and the cross country versions had reasonable seats. The Met Camm built units (class 101) may have been the best of a bad bunch but the seats were incredibly uncomfortable for anyone over 5 foot tall.

As you can guess I'm not in any DMMU preservation group! Perhaps three years of commuting 8 miles on them tainted my views. Sometimes, particularly after finishing late turn, a bus journey home taking 40 minutes was better than the last train of the night formed of a DMMU. At least I got home when I expected.

Before deriding the early sprinters (150, 155 & 156) they were a gap filler between the cheap and rough pacers and the all singing and dancing proposed 210 DEMUs. We got the Pacers, but the 210's were expensive to build , so we got a halfway house of the sprinters....

Cheers, Neil

 

I haven't a clue what the usual 2 car and 4 car sets that plied between Warrington Central and Lime Street were, but morning trips to work were far more enjoyable on the days Allerton managed to send out one of the Trans Pennine units for the early service, almost like being in a proper train if you avoided the powered coaches.

Back in 1989 over the August Bank holiday I used the trains on the N Wales coast to photograph the steam service - the Pacers were rough even back then, if you had to stand in one you made lots of new friends as you were inevitably thrown together,

 

Because they were knackered? Having used 1st gen units in their latter days, their bus seats were no more comfortable than those of Pacers, while they were significantly worse performing.

That’s before considering minor matters like crashworthiness (read the report into an accident at Hyde for an idea of just how poor they were) or the other features of 1950s design that others have mentioned.


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I think the Pacer, that 87025 ran into in 1999 may not have scored very highly in a NCAP test...

 

Indeed. But, worryingly, I think a 1st gen unit would have fared worse.


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