Operator still aims to phase out the much-derided ‘buses on rails’ by the end of 2019

The rail operator Northern has admitted it has not yet begun retiring its much-derided Pacer trains – or “buses on rails” – having previously pledged to start before the end of the year.

Northern said delays to infrastructure improvements meant none of the 100-strong fleet had yet been sent to the railway graveyard.

The admission prompted ire from passenger groups fed up with the antiquated “cattle trucks” and already incensed at January fare increases averaging 3.1%.

A Northern spokesman said: “The delays to infrastructure improvements including Manchester-Bolton electrification meant that the May 2018 timetable was rewritten in 16 weeks rather than 40 weeks, and one ongoing consequence of the delays to electrification is that we can’t yet use electric trains on Manchester-Bolton.

“This means the diesel trains that continue to operate on that route have yet to be redeployed elsewhere on our network. As a result, we need to continue to operate the Pacers and we are still working on the phasing of their retirement.”

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He said the company still aimed to retire all Pacers by the end of 2019.

Pulled together in the 1980s from the carcasses of a British Leyland bus and four-wheeled wagon frames, most Pacer carriages look more like buses than trains inside, with bus-style low-backed seating in rows of three and two.

They are renowned for their lack of comfort and the piercing noise they make when braking or going round a tight corner.

Kate Anstee, who founded the Northern Resist passenger group, travels on a Pacer every day. The week before Christmas her train stopped halfway through a journey and the driver said it was “about to run out of fuel”, she said.

“There is no sign of these Pacers being faded out as promised by Northern, and indeed we have been told by Northern staff that in fact when the new modern units are provided they will have the capacity to run anywhere in the country, which could result in them being moved to meet demand in other parts of the country,” Anstee said.

Ellie Harrison, of the pressure group Bring Back British Rail, said: “The rolling stock companies are profiting, the train-operating companies are profiting – meanwhile passengers are being hit with fare increases and are stuck with cattle trucks for trains.”

Andrew McLean, head curator at York’s National Railway Museum, said Pacers should be celebrated as a saviour of the north of England’s railways. “In the late 1970s rail revenues were tailing off massively and the government wasn’t putting much money into the railways because there was no public appetite to do so,” he said.

“The trains on rural lines had been bought in the 1950s and early 1960s and were coming to their end of their natural life and to replace them with a new [fleet] was way too expensive – £300,000 for one new train back then, which for uneconomic lines just wasn’t making sense.”

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British Rail’s technical centre in Derby came up with the idea for the Pacer, which cost a third of a brand-new train, he said. “It was recognised that if these lines were going to survive at all then these trains were the only option because they were so cost-effective. The classic Pacer grew out of that, with the first rolling out in Yorkshire in 1984.”

While Pacers soldier on in the north of England, Wales and Cornwall, some were exported abroad and abandoned as too old-fashioned, he said. “Bizarrely, a lot of them were sold later on to Iran and had this amazing second life. There were a whole load of them there, though they have all been taken out of service now. They were completely impractical in Iran with no air conditioning.”

Angel Trains, which owns 79 of the Northern Pacers and a further 15 in Wales, said it expected them all to disappear within the next 15 months.