The Pacer train commuters LOVED to HATE! - Northern Class 142 Review
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- Опубликовано: 24 янв 2023
- Today I'm taking a journey back in time, to ride on Northern Rail's famous PACER train! We'll see if this dreaded bus-like contraption is really as bad as people say, as I take a Class 142 on a short commuter journey.
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Journey Details:
Origin: Manchester Piccadilly
Destination: Rose Hill Marple
Company: Northern
Train: UK Class 142 'Pacer'
Accommodation: Standard Class Seat (2nd)
Distance: 12 miles / 19 kilometres
Price: £4.60 (€5.10 / $6.00) - return
Time: 30m, 2 minutes late
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What's your best/worst memory of the Pacer trains? 👇💬
First ever long train journey i accidentally got one from Windermere and ending up going full circle round Winterhill transmitter and through god knows where and Wigan stations twice before ending up at Lime street station. 5pm start 10 pm arrived. Would love to know where I went so I don't do it again !
Don't think I had a worst but all the times I went on a pacer were lovely trips I've always loved the pacer.
I miss the good old and jolly pacer.
My Commute into Manchester was often these nodding donkeys. Hateful things for commuting. Noisy from both the engine and squeal of the wheels, leaks, smells from the exhaust coming into the carriage, dirty overall, cheap to make as the evidence shows, uncomfortable with the bus seats (the separate seats were better though) but overall not suited to high capacity suburban commuter runs. I even did a run on a 142 from Sheffield and back in a 142 and its bus seats, and ended up with a bad back. However, I am glad a number have been saved for preservation lines, as they are, should I say, cute looking, and people who will travel on them in future will realise what a lot of use had suffer on a daily basis.
Every time I had to drive one of the painful, death-trap , unsafe shit-piles. Mayber I'm being too polite. They were worse than this . Passengers - please note; not 'customers' - got the easy end of the deal . Still , they wuld have driven or got the bus if they'd known .
"There are two kinds of people: those who like Pacers, and those who rode them regularly" - something i read somewhere
I rode them regularly as a kid / teenager on the east coat line to Scarborough and to York via Selby. I loved them
I guess if you ride them every day you would soon get fed up with them.
A close friend of mine used to travel on Pacers in South Wales. She liked them, especially the double door entrance that she found more practical for a pushchair than other trains. I travelled on what I realise now were Pacers in Devon, they had the 3+2 seat layout. I never really thought much as to whether it was good or bad. To be honest I've travelled on worse trains.
I went on a few pacers and honestly aren’t that bad i got used to northern rail as I live in Manchester I’ve certainly sat and more uncomfortable seats
😂😂😂
The Pacer isn't that bad. It's worse.
It's good that some have been preserved as a warning to future generations.
'The trouble with youngsters is that they never listen.' And, 'One thing we can learn from history is that people don't learn from history.'
‘Free to leave the train’ makes it sounds like detention haha
Yes, it sounds like free to leave prison Haha.
While the Pacers do appear to be quite awful, they do have one thing going for them, the lines they served still exist. Here in the US the low capacity lines the Pacers, with their low purchase and operating costs, served were simply abandoned. So I guess the best thing that can be said about the Pacers is that they kept the lines in operation until something better came along. And that is actually a rather big deal.
One main issue is there were eventually used to connect Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Nottingham which are some of the largest urban areas in the UK. They were intended to link communities but spent years being the main rail link between large cities. They have only just stopped using them within the last couple of years for this role
Oh yes, York-Southport expresses! Exactly what the Pacers were meant for!
But down here in the south we have rural lines that make these look like metropolis serving lines. Lines with a couple of trains a day, one to get to work and one to get back again, and they never had these shite running on them. I had the misfortune to travel on one of these with the bench seat lay out in the mid noughties and it was shocking. Overloaded to dangerous capacity levels, I was lucky to board early enough to get a seat, a rock hard seat and wedged in without room to move a muscle. Every bump in the track went through your spine and there was many and a journey of about 10 miles tacking half a hour, an actual bus would have been no slower and far more comfortable. Now bare in mind this wasn't a country journey but a journey between 2 major urban centres and you can see how the poor sods up north get shit on all the time. For context I live on the Cambridge to Kings Cross line, at a relatively minor branch off point of the mainline, and that had better trains in the mid 70s, 85MPH diesels, then by 1980 electric 90 MPH trains following installation of overhead cabling, though not all the way to Cambridge which wasn't completed until about a decade later. If it can be afforded to put adequate trains on lines with 20 people a day using it and electrics on a line where most towns have populations between 15000 and 30000 there's no excuses for this between urban centres that I travelled between with one city having a population of 1/2 a million and the other with a population of a 1/4 a million. I know the commuter allure of London makes my line busier than the one up north but that's why our trains aren't 3 busses, sorry carriages, in the rush hour they 8 train carriages for stoppers and 12 carriages for expresses and a more frequent service and our trains are thus not packed like tins of sardines. We have more capacity off peak when the trains are empty than the north had on that line in the rush hour.
Yes, exactly @gonzo262. Might be a bit much saying they saved the railway, but they were cheap to buy and run and probably kept lines going against the odds.
Yes, somebody once said that he /she was lucky to have a train service. However, it was government subsidies that kept lines open, not the Pacers.
weirdly one of the only trains i didn't get motion sick off when i was younger. I think all the panel gaps helped since they became fresh air wind tunnels at top speed
You look at cars
How does a RUclips channel named "sexy guy" have no videos?
@@qwertyTRiG 🤨
I live on a line that literally is the definition of why the pacer came to be - A rural secondary route which isn't electrified and has a rather poor service pattern, which had 142s trundling up and down for literal decades.
My personal thoughts on them, is while they were a saviour of so many smaller lines that otherwise would've met closure, they carried on for far longer then they should of. The fact that they lasted all the way until December 2020 without them rusting away is absolutely wild to me, but they had such a unique level of charm to them that is completely different to anything else I've experienced.
I do miss them, but the civities are much more suitable to the roles the pacers once served.
Bro said a civity, the 197 is crap mate
@@noooo_safechat2589 The 195 is what we have - Honestly though, I've ridden the 197, it's really not as bad as people are saying it is.
I love the whole experience tbh the sounds, the rocky nature of the carriage, it's like being in a classic car you feel everything, I understand not everyone wants that from commuting but for me its an experience
Haha, I agree it's a novel experience. I love stuff like that!
I agree with this. The sounds in this video brought back some great memories.
The only thing about the pacers that I don't miss is some of the smells. That is an "experience" that I can do without. 🤣😂
However I only used them on an occasional basis, so I can also appreciate why the regular commuters don't miss them.
Thing is, these are the "improved" pacers with different gearbox, when they were first introduced, they were even slower and "kadunked" on every track joint on the rail (hence nodding donkey) - welded rail and the new gearbox actually make what you get today slighter better than when introduced.
when introduced, the class 142s had exactly the same automatic 4 speed epicyclic gearbox as the 141s, so they cant have been slower unless they were heavier which i doubt
Another nickname, based on the "Nodding Donkey" nickname, was the "Sodding Wonky" nickname, used by fitters and drivers at first, but then spreading over to the passengers.
@@Trainman10715 142s are actually slightly lighter than the 141s. I think Nomad's post is refering to the pacers being slower when originally built than they were post refit with the Cummins engines and Voith transmissions, rather than between the classes.
The only part missing is the riding it on a rainy/wet day (often in Manchester) in peak commuter times. Crammed on like sardines and smelling like a high school locker room after a rugby match. I’d be lying if I said I missed them!
this was my memory traveling from st helens to lime street but i did like the bench seats
The first Pacers were actually 3 car units, with the middle section having no doors, and the doors were the same as the actual Leyland nation bus. I always found you had better views out of the widows than the sprinters, so they seemed a bit brighter inside.
Class 144s are the 3 car pacers of the fleet
@@declangaming24 aaah yes, it was the class 141 I was thinking of but they were just 2 car but had the same style doors as the Leyland national bus,
@@davebirch1976 Class 141s also had a hole in the floor of the cab where the steering column would have been. 113 had a Voith gearbox, the rest were mechanical epicyclic with a hold gear button at the side of the desk.
The first Pacers were the 141s with the central doors and mechanical gearboxes. A definitive of the original LEV1. A single carriage built as a trial. I believe it went over to the USA for trials. I hate to thing what the ride was like on their tracks with the staggered rail joints.
Ii hated them
To me - growing up in West Yorkshire
and visiting my parents in the 1980s and 1990s
the Pacer was the local train service.
It was the bus on wheels
which certainly bounced around
and because of the wheel configuration
screeched round bends in the track.
The bus doors often let in drafts.
I think they were a short term fix by BR
at a time when it wasn't getting money
and needed something to run.
That forty years later they are still running
is amazing and shameful.
Did you mean to post this as a poem? Because I kind of like it...
The train that never dies! Really didn't like them but towards the end they really grew fond of them. Great Video
Way back in 1981, I used to stay at my grandparents gatekeepers cottage along the East Suffolk Line at Barnby, Suffolk. This line, originally Ipswich to Great Yarmouth until Norwich got their claws into it, was and still is Ipswich to Lowestoft. Apart from sleeping some 4 feet away from Class 37's storming past at stupid times of the morning apart from Sundays, we got a surprise one Sunday morning when this bright yellow bus-on-rails stopped at the crossing to use the lineside phone. It was the unit seen at 3:46 here - called the LEV1 - Leyland Experimental Vehicle 1. They were using the quiet times on Sunday mornings to try the LEV1; and my train-driving relative just happened to be driving the thing. I ended up getting a lift to Lowestoft & back on the thing.
Now here's the fun bit. The LEV1 wasn't that bouncy. In fact, it was way better than the regular class 101's & 105's we had at the time. I believe the reason why the Pacers became the nodding donkeys was down to the fact that the prototypes (LEV1-3) were designed to be single car units. Whilst the classes 140-144 weren't.
The 142 Pacer was a massive part of my childhood and it was always the main train I went on whenever I went out of town for the holidays. The sound brings back nostalgia for me but I will admit that I hated getting on a Pacer at rush hour after being at university. As a kid, they were a fun train to ride on but as a adult, I kind of grew to hate them a bit because they were constantly running on a busy mainline and were always packed when I needed to get home
Nice video! We have pretty similar design here in Czechia. You should deffinetly try it.
It’s a class 810, two axxle DMU with motor and gearbox from Karosa ŠL 11 bus. We still operate them.
We reconstructed them to two or three cars partly low floor DMUs class 814 Regionova and they are all over the country. They saved lot of nice branch lines.
I travelled on the Marple to Piccadilly Pacer for many years. They leaked when it rained. They were freezing in the winter and boiling hot in summer. They were marginally more comfortable in spring and autumn unless it was raining. The worst seat is any window seat, water coming through the roof and windows and the heat from the calf high heater were guaranteed to make your journey miserable. Add to that the heat of the sun beating through the window between spring and summer and you'll pass out within 20 minutes. By sitting on the right of the carriage on the way to Manchester and on the left for the return journey you could avoid the sun. I travelled on that route for about 17 years. At times it was more sardine can than train. The most memorable journey was the one where a lecherous troll pulled on my bra strap! I won't repeat here what I said to him at the time. The last thing I wanted was to hold up the entire train whilst he was thrown off and the police were called but I did get a round of applause and a couple of gallant chaps stood up for me too. I doubt he enjoyed the rest of his journey. I never saw him again. Within a month of my retirement the Pacer was replaced by a nice modern fleet. By 2020 I was paying around £1,000 per year on an annual ticket. Yeah, thanks for all of that Northern Rail.
Thank you for bringing back some awesome memories of travelling to Bridlington with my Grandad in the 90s. I'm glad this popped up in my feed and I'm going to subscribe.
Thanks, that sounds great. 😊
Just not the same without the bench seats. True cattle class. I quite miss them down here in Torquay. What we have now pretend to be posher but aren't really.
The bus seats were OK as you could stretch out on them.
We had Merseyrail ones with the modular hard seats that were a lot to be desired tbh.
Other than those,the others were fine tbh.
Ah yes, but the track on the Torbay line is in relatively good nick; when those same units reached the Barnstple line, we really did ride the bucking bronco. When they withdrew them they finally realised it was the dreadful state of the track. In many places it still is. Incidentally, was Paignton to Barnstaple the only instance of a coast-to-coast pacer service?
Northern Rail and GWR totally refurbished some Pacers around 2016. I had the privilege of riding on both TOC’s refurbed Pacers.
When riding on mainline high spec track they were a very comfortable ride.
Oooooo Piccadilly!!!! I miss it so much!!! Thanks for the video 😍
Used to get the Huddersfield train. I remember pushing the doors shut and giving the guard a nod. Felt very important…
Excellent video as always keep up the great work.
Thank you!
I commuted daily between Stockport and Altrincham for about 6 years on these dreadful contraptions and everyone hated them including the staff. You get used to the ear-piercing screech of the wheels when going round corners and awful smell of the seats but you never get used to them breaking down.
About 1 train in 4 would fail to arrive due to some mechanincal fault or other - usually the doors. A guard told me they were 40 years old and due to be scapped but Northern bought them instead.
I don't know if it was poor track maintenance but we hit a rail joint, maybe, coming into Bolton from Wigan. There was a bang and my spine was jarred. I had sciatica at the time, I think it was around 2011 LOL. I thought of it as a bus on wheels which is what it was. I bet all the earliest coaches were wagons with bodies strapped on. But you have to be amazed at the returns on these vehicles. Are they owned by Eversholt?
Lived in Carlisle 20 plus years, will happily travel out west, or on to the North East, anytime on the Pacers and 158s. Great workhorses, even better sounds
My favorite video of yours so far
South Wales. We legit only ever had Pacers, with a surprise sprinter every so often. Despite the fact that they bounce more than a car at a low rider meet, and squeal more than a stamped on a piglet, you came to love them. I do miss them 😂
Me too. 😥
Always used to travel from carlisle to Newcastle as a kid on these old bouncy trains, I can remember how fun they were. 😂😂😂
As always a great video! You absolutely have to drive with the German tilting trains of the 612 series! They are now a good 20 years old. As I said, they have tilting technology and are diesel. I personally like them very much, but there are also people who hate them. They are also called the "Wackeldackel". They drive, for example, in the Allgäu. So I am sure that these trains can be interesting for you and wish you a lot of fun and a good trip if you should go with them.
A very respectful audit
I remember the pacer trains as a child travelling from bolton to blackpool north, to me its nostalgic to see one, yes they were noisy and bouncey but its a nostalgic character of them i wont forget, happy days back then, also love the sprinter trains
i was looking for a reveiw of these on your channel and everywhere else and you post this. thank you
I miss their bounce, that engine roar. I was able to drive one last year (video is on my channel). It's just a legend of a train for me and they'll always have a place in my heart!
You'll never hear a nicer pull off, then the roar of a Leyland T11 at full acceleration
@@waynefromhull there's just nothing like it.
Used to have to get the Northern Rail Pacer train into Manchester and sometimes Trafford Park.
To say I don't have much love for the the company or the Pacers is perhaps the understatement of the year.
All my life growing up with the bench seats stacked so close to the one in front that you had to sit with your legs akimbo or off to the side so your hips were strained and you felt uncomfortable. I wouldn't mind but I'm not that tall in the first place, so I sympathise with people 6 foot +.
I grew up with them from baby into my working adult life and they just never seemed to die off.
I eventually moved away and they still used Pacers up until they were finally dragged out back and shot repeatedly to ensure they remained dead in 2020.
I haven't travelled on their replacements because I no longer live there but I'm happy for everyone who ever suffered on them that they are finally gone for good.
I’m so glad you like them
Ooh! That lovely squeeling noise on the rails! I remember getting on one of these new in 1988 and thinking "wow! A new train!"
My wife and I have used the Rose Hill service a few times, but with a couple of cycles. The disused track to High Lane and Macclesfield is a great walking and cycling route. You could also access the Manchester to Buxton line at Middlewood. With so much talk about cycling and walking, this is one of the few (only?) trains with room to store cycles safely. Perhaps they were more ahead of their time than people thought.
I had to ride on these from South Wales to Bristol daily for work. Usually we were supposed to have different carriages but about twice a week these would end up being used. They were so crowded and awful. Such a great day when they got rid of them.
The award for most stations per person in the UK surely goes to Tyndrum. It's a tiny village in Scotland, served by two Scotrail stations because it sits just north of a rail junction.
Berney Arms is a railway station, a windmill, a farmhouse and a pub which has closed down. [Wiki.]
Used to always serve the Chester line, and I used to visit my grandad in lostock Gralam on one travelling from Stockport. They certainly kept a lot of lines open that would have surely gone had they not, but they probably soldiered on a bit too long.
I used to live on the Penistone Line, which ran mostly rural & semi-rurally from Huddersfield, then minor villages through to Barnsley and through almost civilization into Sheffield. At the time it's 100% three carriage 144s, I grew to love them. They were noisy, bouncy, but they were pretty reliable for the ridiculously cheap parts they were cobbled from.
Agreed, the 144s were actually a lot better too.
My old commute home from Uni from Newcastle to Carlisle on these... I remember once the doors wouldn't fully close, leaving a gap of a couple inches... It was freezing!
Oh yeah, they always leave a gap haha!
These were the trains I used to get to school, that and the sprinter were very common on my Liverpool commutes. These days, we get 319's, which are a heck of a lot smoother than the old Pacers
Oh god, the screeching, the bench seats. The toilets often had an un-flushable shit in the bowl. It would inevitably be beige.
I remember being crammed in for hours on these things. The doors let in so much wind at speed. They were boiling in summer and freezing in winter.
I liked them because they had a personality and a really good heating system!
Haha, yeah they certainly had character!
I only travelled on the Pacers between Southport and Manchester a couple of times.
I would describe these rides as an exciting adventure. When travelling at speed (no idea of the actual speed) and on the straight stretches, they bounced along merrily. I somehow thought of them as the rail equivalent of the Citroen 2CV 😊. On one return journey one of the engine/transmission systems failed and we limped into Wigan Wallgate were all had to wait for the following Pacer and stand for most of the journey to Southport.
Me, I like the Pacers as they did what they were intended to do and for a lot longer than intended. The were the original “bus replacement” train. I have quite a few model 142s some of which are in similar running condition to the real ones (rough and ready sometimes).
I spent the best part of 18 years with these from almost new in '86 until I moved TOC's in 2004. They were truly awful from an operating view. When they first arrived at Newton Heath, runs to York all stops via the Calder Valley were an everyday occurrence. It's worth remembering what was replaced on these units just in the first ten years. Engines, gearboxes, doors, heating system and not forgetting the frightening cable brakes, that's hardly cost effective. At one time it was possible to see units at NH in several different liveries, the ex WR ones kept there WR destination blinds fro quite a few months, Oldham via Weston Super Mere! I always thought the 143/144 units appeared to be better built, but the 142's with their panel style build were cold and damp in winter(cabs),noisy all the time because there was no sealed cab bulkhead. I'm convinced I started getting tinnitus as a result of the screeming flanges leaving Oldham. Can't think of a single good point really!
You need to see the Arriva trains in Denmark and see the modern view of this train!.
This video also brings me back to the 90's S-trains in Copenhagen. The style looks similar.
Did a Pacer trip from Middlesborough to Whitby a good few years ago now with my bike. i actually liked it, sure there is a lot of bouncing and flange squeal, but that just added to its sort of charm and quirkiness. These were built to a cheap cost to move people around. There can be no doubt that they did that, although probably longer than they should have done.
I've driven the bus version (Leyland Nationals) during my early days of being a bus driver in the 90's. I actually love the Pacer and there is one on a heritage line situated only about 10 miles from where i am in South West Wales.
A problem was if designed for lines that did not have much passenger use, they were used on lines where the passenger numbers did exceed the capacity, so a lack of buying correct stock for general needs
The first long-distance train I ever rode was a Pacer. So it was all uphill from there!
Unless you hit an 11 degree gradient, then it might start going down fast after that.
I took the Rose Hill route to go to Woodley once and that's it, always used to be there on the Sheffield route
As a wee boy I was lucky enough to travel on British Rail mark ones, in br green. Very comfortable seats, some had private cabins and you felt like a king. The Pacer replaced them. I'm a fan personally as I travelled regularly up the line from Hull to Bridlington and Scarborough and also to York in my teens. Family memories. I last used these between Bradford Interchange and York early - mid noughties. Poor modernisation meant uncomfortable journeys. But the ones with coach seats where super comfy. I'm a bus enthusiast first and love anything Leyland. The National was a fave of mine. And the roar from the T11 engine was magnificent as was the feeling of power vibratiing from 400hp twin t11s. I didn't mind the sprinter, or super sprinter at first. But again modernisation meant less comfier seats.
I only ever used the train to get between Manchester and Liverpool on the Cheshire line so Pacers were pretty much all I knew. In my early twenties I would get the last service out of Oxford Road on a Sunday night and it would stop at practically every tree between there and Hough Green. I used to absolutely despise that journey - slow, bouncy, loud, either freezing cold or boiling hot, and a seat that was like sitting on a pile of bricks. They are/were a thoroughly wretched vehicle.
I used to love it when a class 158 would be waiting for me instead and I knew it would be quiet comfort and only three of four stops instead of five hundred.
Romiley is my old home town station. I used to commute on the Belle Vue route to Piccadilly and get off at Ashbury's - this was in the mid-90s. TBF, the slam-door trains they used then I think dated back to the 1950s and were cramped with at least 1/2 of one of the carriages taken up with a guards' van area, which, if you were unlucky (usually due to the 8.12 from Rose Hill being cancelled.... again), you would be crammed into, stood-up the whole journey, like sardines - only managing to stay upright due to the fact there was physically nowhere to move. I don't miss those journeys.
Absolutely incredible trains.
Built out of absolute neccesity due to the extreme age of the first generation DMU's by then but intended for only nine years service as a ",Stop Gap" until the long promised funding came for new trains was forthcoming.
But it never came did it?
They did forty plus years front line every day service and with a bit of style and character.
They probably saved more "on a knife edge" lines from almost certain closure than we will ever know about and I never went on one that broke down.
One had one engine fail once, but it still somehow limped into Halifax only four minutes down.
Sorry, but I absolutely adored these incredibly valuable and tough little units that sadly were enforced to serve far longer than they were ever intended to and performing services that they were never designed for, not forgetting that drivers and crews mostly loving them, especially drivers, as the driving position was simply the best there was. End of!!
I think we will regret pandering to the "nimbys" that finally killed them off and their great popularity, so soon after their withdrawal, goes some way I think, to validate that thought.
They are now being highly successful and popular on heritage railways throughout the UK and I know for a fact, that more than one "fat controller" on these lines, look at them purely as an absolute "godsend".
Long live the Pacer.
If you had reduced mobility they were absolutely useless . Definitely not NIMBYISM
@@UnbelievableEricthegiraffe No, ok I would agree that that particular example maybe isn't NIMBYISM, no, but equally I can't fully agree to the "absolutely useless" tag, as I saw them able to be used with ramps, though I will admit that this wasn't ideal.
This merely shows that they were designed in a different era and that they really were pushed WAY past when they should have been withdrawn, but through MASSIVE lack of investment by parties of ALL colours, they were forced to carry on into the era of DDA compliance, which, quite rightly did come about and which sadly, but understandably, ultimately saw the reason for their final replacement.
Surely you cannot be serious with this comment? I sense this comment was written with tongue firmly in cheek!!
@@lemonaid2216 No. Absolutely not.
@@dancedecker You use words like "great popularity" and "style and character" to describe possibly the worst train in British railway history? Surely this is the definition of sarcasm!
As someone unfortunate enough to have been born in Birmingham I take issue with the "second largest city" comment. But I did get very familiar with these trains commuting each day along the Dawlish sea wall living now in Devon. For me they still remind me of when I first moved here, the sea, beaches etc. So I sort of miss them - that said, they were grim by pretty much any metric and I also remember very frequent breakdowns.
Took one from Scarborough to Hull when I took the Grandkids to the seaside. Hull for the aircraft museum. Very difficult journey.
Got the bus back. And I have free passes. (Retired staff).
I drove these from 1989 till the end of 2010 and except for one memorable trip ( on a Barrow service ) never failed to get to journey's end in all that time.I spent a lot of time doing Piccadilly - Chester - Sheffield - Barrow - Blackpool - Liverpool so i had no complaints about reliability.....they made a lot of noise when moving and were a nightmare in leaf fall.
Agree that they were pretty reliable, I never had any such problems as a passenger!
Remember riding on the Pacer as a kid, they where being phased out on my route to the city centre but i remember a few times going on it. In retrospect I see why people dislike it's shabby and inconvenient design, but i use to live sitting on that little step and watching the tracks as a kid between stops.
A train I wished I went on just for the sake of being part of the group that had done so 😂
Great vids as always Albs,
- CB
I travelled on once, never again I still have PTSD and a powdered spine from the experience.
This just greatly resembles our Czechoslovakian Type 810. There were nearly 700 of these small bus-wagons, all of them built by Vagonka Studénka in the '70s. The engine and gearbox were directly copied from then-popular buses; it was extremely noisy inside, the seats were just 90° angle benches (trust me, even churches have better seats) and there were the exactly same problems like displayed here, the interior was often beaten up, dirty or rusty. Nowadays these are rare; too bad that there will not be a video about them, it would be really funny to see.
I used the line to Marple many times when I lived in Marple Bridge so rode these trains frequently. They were ok for short journeys but not great for travel to Sheffield. By coincidence I rode on the last ever mainline Class 101 train from Rose Hill back on December 24th 2003. They also had their issues but often gave a better ride than the Pacer.
even after their withdrawal i still find myself commuting on these units on a the KWVR getting from Keighley to Oxenhope where i volunteer.
they're alright for short slower routes, but long journeys are hell.
Roomy and airy the pacers have a character all of their own loved and hated the marmite of trains now an incredibly important part of UK railway history good to hear so many have been preserved I have spent many hours on these trains over the years and quite miss them now they have gone the Hope Valley line from Manchester to Sheffield will never be the same again but to see one now Huddersfield Station Platform 2 has a class144 pacer as a permanent fixture now very fitting for the Penistone line
I used to ride these on the Esk Valley Line between Middlesbrough and Whitby in the oughts. I thought they were quite fun, tho' I didn't have to take them every day. You could certainly hear it squealing like a outraged piglet as it rounded the tight curve pulling in to Grosmont!
And what a beautiful line that is. As a teenager I'd take the moorsbus from Hull to Pickering, Steam from Pickering to Grosmont and Pacer onto Middlesborough. Then take the United bus service to Whitby or Scarborough. Overnight stay and a Sprinter back to Hull. It's not the same anymore but the line retains it's beauty
I have to be honest, I was always a fan of the pacers, through most of my younger years I used to travel for outings to Manchester or Liverpool (and also for work later on), whether that be through Regional Railways, Merseyrail, First North Western, Arriva, seen them personally in all sorts of liveries over the years, as much as people hated them, they did their job brilliantly, always super reliable, I was never left stranded or had one break down on me, always got me to where I needed to go, not to mention they were only built for a life expectancy of 10 years, they soldiered on for 30 more, and drove to the scrapyard under their own power which is a lot to be said.
I'm glad there are some still preserved.
Fun fact! Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's transit agency SEPTA tested a Pacer for the unelectrified portion of it's Newtown Regional Rail line. They took the Pacer on one test run and it was so bad, they never ran it again and ended up closing that unelectrified portion of the line. I think they may have sold it to VIA Rail in Canada but I'm not 100% sure.
The pacer sure is a well travelled train!
I grew up riding these trains to sheffield, meadowhall, leeds, and rotherham. Sometimes, I kind of miss them compared to the sprinters that serve my line now.
Am I the only person who likes these things, grew up with them and they have character. Many teenage adventure started on one these! They kept many lines open, they deserve a little respect! 💪
Agreed, they did their job for a very long time!
Coming from eastern europe and soviet time trains, it always fascinates me to see "worst" trains that look like a premium class for me lol
Very funny post. New sub here, really like your style of presentation. Well done.
so sorry you had to endure a trip with Northern, get well soon!
also, like what you did at 3:20.
I've not seen a Pacer train for a long time. The last time I used one was on the Bristol Temple Meads to Severn Beach line, which was probably back in the days of Wales & West, not sure if they were replaced by the time Wessex Trains took over, but definitely weren't around when First Great Western (GWR) took over the route. I also remember them on the Morpeth to Newcastle route but that might be as far back as the British Rail days, or the predecessor to Northern Trains.
The Bristol Pacers class 143s migrated to Exeter and did work for Great Western.
Some 142s were also used in the late 80s based around Devon & Cornwall routes.
They all ended up back in the North West though after a while.
The Pacers were an absolute nightmare. Having said that it's amazing how different they look on a sunny day with no other passengers on.
I wrote Pacers a few time when I was a kid. Fond memories of my Youth Group getting day rovers and going all over Yorkshire on them. Them were days. They fine for short hops around but a proper train like Northern mostly has now is the best solution for everyone. Accessibility is very important and a loud, rickety, step-up train is not accessible for anyone.
* rode Pacers *
* times *
I had that problem on the subway
but not the new Elizabeth subway the old one
As an enginer, I like these.
They are simple and effective solutuon, with minimal effort.
You can spend fortune developing ideal solution. What I like the most, is solution that does what is required, with minimal effort, at lowest cost. And it can be held together with ducltape and shuelace for a century.
Imagine if a train manufacturer brought back the pacer as a modern and accessible version of it
On a trip as a teenager with friends to Blackpool Pleasure Beach. We sat down and as soon as it set of. Two of my friends went flying backwards, as the seat flipped backwards.
We moved seats after calming down, only to find there was a large hole in the side of the next carraige which was being covered by a loose piece of MDF.
It was a scarier ride than the big one. The flipping seat was endless entertainment flipped people every time it jolted setting off.
Oh god! 😭😭😭
i Like the class 142 because it rescued a lot of lines what would of shut down if it wasn't for the pacer. this was due to the lack of profitabillity of the mojority of the lines what the pacer ran on.
it was a good train for the time
A commonly held myth. The overall costings were greater than had standard DMUs been employed.
Check out Gareth Dennis Railnatter ep62!
It's actually interesting to have this video come out now- just to look back seeing what the Covid setups were like again makes me breathe a huge sigh of relief! I'd forgotten the faff around the one way systems, being forced to wear those godawful masks, and none of the stations having anywhere to buy food/drinks because they were still all shut at the time.
It was a ridiculous part of history, and it must never be repeated... 🙄
I used to say at the time, to my friends and family that we'd look back at all the awful restrictions and dumb protocols of the lockdown and laugh about it one day. That day still hasn't come and watching thr beginning of this videocand seeing Piccadilly Station when it was a weird circuitous rat maze, along with all the shuttered shops, sent shivers down my spine. Its still to fresh in my head 😂
You show a picture of a single car railbus at 3:51. Is that on the Borders Railway on the A7 between Carlisle and Edinburgh? I walked round a deserted yard there in summer 2020, and saw either that or a very similar unit.
Late May bank holiday 2019, I travelled on a very crowded 3+2 seated Pacer from Whitby to Newcastle, which wasn't the most pleasant 3 hours I've ever spent. At least I wasn't going all the way to Hexham 😀. I did get a nice photo of it next to a North Yorkshire Moors Railway BR Standard Class locomotive though. I heard the Pacer driver telling the steam engine driver that his locomotive was making the Pacer look old fashioned 😆.
The Class 141 was actually the first version of the Pacer, if you exclude the two prototype class 140-units. The class 141 had a slightly narrower body and more wedged front. The body on the Class 141 was actually the same width as a a standard Leyland National bus. The Class 142 had a slightly wider body and redesigned flatter front.
They were originally supplied with standard four-leaf Leyland National bus doors but it was discovered that a passing train at high-speed would blow these doors open, hardly a good idea from a safety viewpoint. They were also supplied with Leyland engines and gearboxes (well Leyland owned Self-Changing Gears) but the combination was designed for bus work and so proved increasingly problematic. So both the doors and engines/transmissions were ripped out and replaced. The bill for this was picked up by Volvo Bus, who’d purchased Leyland Bus after privatisation.
It should also be noted that there are four classes in the Pacer family. The class 141 and 142 are based on adapted Leyland National Bus bodies. The Class 143 and 144s are based on adapted Walter Alexander P-type bus bodies. Whilst Leyland is now sadly the way of the do-do, Walter Alexander is still with us as part of Alexander Dennis, the UK’s biggest bus builder.
To be honest I have a soft spot for the Pacers. They were designed as an interim solution to a fiscally-challenged British Rail to replace earlier Diesel Multiple Units from the 1950s, many riddled with asbestos. They were meant to be a cost effective solution to branch lines and on them, they were more than acceptable. They should have been replaced as the class 150 family trains came on stream. It wasn’t their fault that orders were cut back and they were used on lines that they were never designed for and ended up lasting way longer than they should have. As they never reached my native Scotland I didn’t ride on them that often but did experience them on the Blackpool South line. On such a line, they were fine. Just that fine. But that doesn’t mean that they should have been used on high intensity commuter routes. But that’s not the Pacer’s fault.
As a railfan becoming a bus fan as well, I'd never have thought these things had bus bodies. The windows barely opening must've made it a living hell to ride them during the summer. A jampacked Pacer on a 30+ degrees day must've been a health hazard on rails
I saw one preserved Pacer somewhere by the KWVR Station in Haworth
You should try Lättähattu in Finland between Helsinki and Porvoo. Its basicly A bus on tracks. Its operated by Porvoon museorautatie.
The Pacer is much like the old German "Schienenbus" or rail bus. While a step up in comfort in the 1950s, they became quite outdated in the 1970s, but toted along for another 30 years.
After they were mentioned in the news, that they were being replaced - I was curious as to why they had swing-doors and not the sliding-leaf doors of other commuter trains. And then the desirement to actually ride on one, but they have been withdrawn and as I am in London I have been used to riding the class 313 train on the Hertford loop line and various diesel buses, at least some have been preserved so I might go on one 🙂.
I think some are looking back with rose tinted spectacles. I used to go on one from Liverpool to Preston and it was a slow uncomfortable journey.
They turned Sheffield to York into a brutal endurance trial (on the bench seats) avoided like the plague after that. I got a HST back !
Yeah always worth waiting for an HST! :)
The seat cushion that wasnt attached reminds me of a seat on my school bus, the front left seat closest to the window was broken so you could lift the seat from the frame
I always preferred the pacer to the sprinter apart from on bends because of the screech which is something to do with the size of the bogie and distance between wheels causing some friction between the edges of wheels and the tracks
Yeah! Nice video
Fortunately the only Northern service in my area, is the Nottingham > Leeds service (I'm over in Long Eaton), which never used these cursed things (Used either sprinters or the new CAF's, though I rather hate the CAF's), so the only time I had to experience them, was when I was often about in the Sheffield / Leeds area. Mind you, can remember one of the Pacers on Northern's fleet, that always made me giggle..... Often refereed to as Heinz, it had the most wicked FART noise whilst pulling off, quite similar to an old DMU slam door.
🤣🤣🤣
Pacers were made with Sprinters, but were made for a discount clientele. It rocks because it has no bogies, not because of maintenance issues.
I’m so happy
Take comfort in that the shareholders reaped big dividends at our expense and comfort.
That prototype painted in Yellow still exists & was two Leyland National front ends back to back. You can still see where the bus accoutrements were simply covered over.
It was initially an unpowered test vehicle at the Derby test facility.
The problem was that they were meant to be only a stop-gap to replace a lot of life-expired DMU sets. But then there was no investment to replace the Pacers within the original lifespan, which I think was meant to be 10 years max.
A commuter DMU with rigid axle cars was never going to ride very well. I would like to know what BR Derby thought the max speed should have been. Thankfully I never rode one. They were more common in West Yorkshire. As I type there is one sitting forlornly in the store of vehicles at Gascoigne Wood MGR sidings.