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 !
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 .
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
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.
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 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!
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.
@@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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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
Probably saved a lot of little used lines, the right thing at the right time. Interior state is not down to the vehicle. Great big Cummins engine sound though!
There was nothing wrong with the Pacers. Solid little workhorses. The Pacers had a character all of their own. I worked with Pacers for 14 years. All the Pacers entered service with the bus style seats in 3+2 style. The interior of the unit in the video was one of those refurbished by Arriva Trains Northern and once allocated to Heaton depot in Newcastle. In all fairness it was the 195's that replaced the Pacers.
Good job they never hit anything with a full load. Be like the Croydon tram. Albeit entertaining! to ride on. One of our drivers hit a horse at Carleton crossing. They sent for a vet. The horse was OK. But he shot the 142 🤣
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hmm. I have a love/loathe relationship with the Pacers in general but at the time these were made. BR wanted to buy a cheap and a simple to maintain DMU. The good points about the Pacers is that they do have larger windows and are unique looking. But that's the positives. The downsides is the ear splitting metal on metal screen due to being a 2 axle per car instead of 4 axle like the Class 150's onwards had. Had these Pacers been fitted with 4 axle trucks. That would allow them to be made longer in length and would tick all the boxes. The later Class 153/155 DMU's solved this but the 153's was another cut and shut design as BR found them too expensive to run as 2 car units. The Class 153's were the replacement intentionally for the Class 121 DMU's but there was not enough to go round and some 121 DMU's survived on lines around the Chiltern areas until very recently. Nice to see some Pacers preserved though.
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 think the pacer would be fine if the price reflected what you get. Instead it's normal uk ticket pricing which is astronomically high. When the tiny cost to build one was already paid off 10 times over 4 decades ago and they do not use much fuel either. All you've got is a driver to pay it's not like they have any cleaners, and that would require what 6 people on the train an hour...
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.
“For gods sakes! You’re BUSES on RAILS! It’s- yeah, it’s literally your only purpose! Being a good railbus! How can you not do the one thing you were designed for?”
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.
They were a totally ingenious and cheap way to ‘create’ rolling stock for an almost broke British Rail. Horrible to travel on though but still, well done BR
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.
When still known as rail buses and looking a bit like a Leyland National from the front they ran on SR non electric lines, having two Leyland 680's under the floor of each motor car and a 5 speed semi auto gearbox with a reversing box, 3 or 4 car units, motor car each end.
It was my first encounter with British Railways back in 1991, surely not the best first impression. Although the refurbished unit with the 2+2 seating seems not as bad as the bench seats in the older units.
Looking at the state of Piccadilly and the general lack of passengers I suspect that this took place in the summer of 2020 whilst the country was in the midst of Covid restrictions. The Pacers were finally withdrawn by the start of 2021.
6:17 Just as bad as the flushed contents ending up on the tracks, because of how bouncy these Pacer trains are, you can actually see the water moving about violently in the toilet bowl; I saw this on my train journey between Lincoln and Gainsborough when I took a quick trip to the Mad About Trains shop in Gainsborough during my day in Lincoln and ended up buying a Hornby 2009 catalogue there, along with buying some track sections for my model railway....
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
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.
personally, quite liked the pacer, it is indeed, the train from the inventors of The Mini.... and it has character... disclaimer: my own experience of this train type was (though regular) only on a small branch route some 20 minutes in length (Bristol-Templemeads to Avonmouth Bridges)....
On cold wet Manchester winter mornings in the late 80s, words can't describe how utterly miserable I'd feel as one of these horrors trundled round the curve into the equally miserable platform 14 at Manchester Piccadilly bound for Warrington. I could still cheerfully set one alight and watch it burn 😂
Please rewiev a polish EN57 with a cute nickname "kibel" (toilet in english), a nice competitor to this one. Be fast tho, they are being modernized or ditched and i dont think og ones have much time left
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.
Made cheap as chips by BR & BL, two brands not renowned for their quality at the time. They weren’t helped by Northern’s slack maintenance regime of the interior. Purely functional…. Except in summer where the heating was on to stop the engine overheating. So whilst being bounced along you were in an un-air conditioned oven.
I have to confess to really disliking them - I was commuting between Manchester and Bolton (just before electification) for a few years, so was using them a long time after their 'best before date' and in the depths of winter, so was seeing them at their worst - cold, draughty, and with condensation dribbling down the windows. Before anyone points it out - I like the idea of them for when they were originally built for - as a dirt cheap stopgap measure to prove an idea / tied them over until something better can be purchased.
Just seen this video. The price of £4.60 for an anytime day return (inc railcard) in Aug 2020. It is now £5.45 in Aug 2024 (trainline) - 20% increase - and we wonder why people don't use the trains!!
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 😆.
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
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
Our local heritage railway (the Keith and Dufftown Railway) has acquired a Pacer - as memory serves, a Class 144 and, odd creature that I am, I am looking forward to it going into service to see just how good or bad it actually is.
It was just a practical train for what it was intended for. Unfortunately it was often pressed into service on whatever run needed a train due to shortages. I travelled on one from Hull to York and didn’t have a problem.
Pacers were great . . . For their intended use. That is - deployment on shorter, lightly used branch lines as a stop gap to replace 1st generation DMUs and keep the lines they served open until more modern rolling stock was available. The problem with Pacers is that they kept them in service for far too long and kept using them on longer and busier routes far after they should have been retired from service altogether.
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.
They got rid of these once the brand new trains came into play. There are hardly that come in and out of Leeds. We have trains that have tables in them. They tend to be ones after these pacers (153-158/9)
I never minded them, but to be honest, bad experiences with (not pacer) trains in the UK made me quickly switch into my own vehicle and avoid trains. From a "only used for short trips every full moon" they are fine. but I won´t talk for anyone who uses them regularly.
A few comments on your quite intersting video (as someone who used Pacers in the North West quite a bit) - you refer to the Pacers as "based on a really old bus"; the Leyland National was in production all the way to 1985, the first year of Pacer production, therefore they were actually "based on concurrent bus technology" - their real failure was in the design (or lack of) the axles. It would have been interesting to see how they would have operated, and been regarded, had they been designed with small bogies. You mention the rust and leaking issues - you were looking at 35-year-old trains, based on engineering designs dating back to 1972 (when the Leyland National first appeared), so it could be argued they stood up to their heavy use rather better than expected of a vehicle that was designed as a stopgap, pending the arrival in the early 2000s of new Provisional/Regional stock, so were only expected to operate for 20 years or so. The doors aren't from Leyland Nationals (a 4-leaf folding door wasn't considered safe for rail operation). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyland_National#/media/File:Midland_Red_South_Leyland_National_NOE_551R.jpg And the reason for the single row of luggage racks is that they were on the side that had the 2-seat bench (as it was unreasonable and rather dangerous to have them on the 3-seat side). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_142#/media/File:Blackpool_train_inside.JPG
I know a lot of people gave the Pacer a lot of grief for their ride, noise and questionable comfort (with reason of course) but at the end of the day, they still did their job and got people from A to B.
Those trains were really bad in the rain, because they often leaked. You'd think north west England, famed for its wet weather, would at least have waterproof trains.
It seems nobody mentioned the "flat wheel" (or what do you call this in Britain) that can be heard here in some of the shots. That rapid bam-bam-bam caused by a flat spot on a wheel. Certainly, it could happen to any train but most operators would fix it fairly soon.
Travelled on these many times between New Mills Central to Edale and Sheffield never an issue, now these new CAF Things have taken over, theres nothing but technical issues with them.
I presume because of the way British Rail was organised at the time. In the early 1980s it was split into "sectors" - Intercity, Regional Railways and Network Southeast (with various name changes along the way) and Scottish services had their own operator, ScotRail. Pacers were mainly a Regional Railways thing. Networtk Southeast had few diesel lines and commissioned only a small number of replacements - 159s, 165s and 166s (Turbos). Otherwise it continued to use old diesel stock, usually from around the late 1950s.
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 .
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.
"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 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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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. 😊
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.
Used to get the Huddersfield train. I remember pushing the doors shut and giving the guard a nod. Felt very important…
I liked them because they had a personality and a really good heating system!
Haha, yeah they certainly had character!
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.]
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!
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.
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!
Always used to travel from carlisle to Newcastle as a kid on these old bouncy trains, I can remember how fun they were. 😂😂😂
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
Probably saved a lot of little used lines, the right thing at the right time. Interior state is not down to the vehicle. Great big Cummins engine sound though!
Imagine if a train manufacturer brought back the pacer as a modern and accessible version of it
There was nothing wrong with the Pacers. Solid little workhorses. The Pacers had a character all of their own. I worked with Pacers for 14 years. All the Pacers entered service with the bus style seats in 3+2 style. The interior of the unit in the video was one of those refurbished by Arriva Trains Northern and once allocated to Heaton depot in Newcastle. In all fairness it was the 195's that replaced the Pacers.
I agree they were hard working machines! So many interior designs too...
@Superalbs Travels the refurbishments were done during privatisation
Fcking knew you'd be here! GUARD AMOSSSSSS.
@@JackBowley95 would you expect any less FELLA
Good job they never hit anything with a full load. Be like the Croydon tram. Albeit entertaining! to ride on. One of our drivers hit a horse at Carleton crossing. They sent for a vet.
The horse was OK.
But he shot the 142 🤣
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.
I used to have to ride them between Doncaster and sheffield. They were utterly terrible. The noise was horiffic when going around corners.
Love❤ them or loathe them no denying they did job they were made for and were in service for many many years service
I agree, they were meant to be in service for 20 years but were really in service for 35 years.
Oh yes absolutely have to admit I ❤️ pacers
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
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!
My favorite video of yours so far
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.
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.
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.
The jam packed seats in the pacers make sense when you realise the pacers were made to get as many people as possible for as cheap as possible places
At least you can open the windows
Tried that. Let in even more diesel fumes!
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.
Take comfort in that the shareholders reaped big dividends at our expense and comfort.
Hmm. I have a love/loathe relationship with the Pacers in general but at the time these were made. BR wanted to buy a cheap and a simple to maintain DMU. The good points about the Pacers is that they do have larger windows and are unique looking. But that's the positives. The downsides is the ear splitting metal on metal screen due to being a 2 axle per car instead of 4 axle like the Class 150's onwards had. Had these Pacers been fitted with 4 axle trucks. That would allow them to be made longer in length and would tick all the boxes. The later Class 153/155 DMU's solved this but the 153's was another cut and shut design as BR found them too expensive to run as 2 car units. The Class 153's were the replacement intentionally for the Class 121 DMU's but there was not enough to go round and some 121 DMU's survived on lines around the Chiltern areas until very recently. Nice to see some Pacers preserved though.
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 think the pacer would be fine if the price reflected what you get. Instead it's normal uk ticket pricing which is astronomically high. When the tiny cost to build one was already paid off 10 times over 4 decades ago and they do not use much fuel either. All you've got is a driver to pay it's not like they have any cleaners, and that would require what 6 people on the train an hour...
When was this filmd? I thought pacers were gone, so this must be a couple of years ago.
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.
By the way, Birmingham is England's second city!
Pacers were made with Sprinters, but were made for a discount clientele. It rocks because it has no bogies, not because of maintenance issues.
“For gods sakes! You’re BUSES on RAILS! It’s- yeah, it’s literally your only purpose! Being a good railbus! How can you not do the one thing you were designed for?”
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.
🤣🤣🤣
They were a totally ingenious and cheap way to ‘create’ rolling stock for an almost broke British Rail. Horrible to travel on though but still, well done BR
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.
When still known as rail buses and looking a bit like a Leyland National from the front they ran on SR non electric lines, having two Leyland 680's under the floor of each motor car and a 5 speed semi auto gearbox with a reversing box, 3 or 4 car units, motor car each end.
It was my first encounter with British Railways back in 1991, surely not the best first impression.
Although the refurbished unit with the 2+2 seating seems not as bad as the bench seats in the older units.
You should try Lättähattu in Finland between Helsinki and Porvoo. Its basicly A bus on tracks. Its operated by Porvoon museorautatie.
Excellent video as always keep up the great work.
Thank you!
When was this filmed?
Ye when was this filmed
Hmm. Quite. I came home on a Class 331.
They were retired from this route in 2020, so presumably 2020.
@@kieranstravels could be but pacers where still running in 2021 I saw some running the Sheffield - Leeds service
Looking at the state of Piccadilly and the general lack of passengers I suspect that this took place in the summer of 2020 whilst the country was in the midst of Covid restrictions. The Pacers were finally withdrawn by the start of 2021.
6:17 Just as bad as the flushed contents ending up on the tracks, because of how bouncy these Pacer trains are, you can actually see the water moving about violently in the toilet bowl; I saw this on my train journey between Lincoln and Gainsborough when I took a quick trip to the Mad About Trains shop in Gainsborough during my day in Lincoln and ended up buying a Hornby 2009 catalogue there, along with buying some track sections for my model railway....
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 took the Rose Hill route to go to Woodley once and that's it, always used to be there on the Sheffield route
how was the food on the pacer? dining car or at seat service?
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.
personally, quite liked the pacer, it is indeed, the train from the inventors of The Mini.... and it has character...
disclaimer: my own experience of this train type was (though regular) only on a small branch route some 20 minutes in length (Bristol-Templemeads to Avonmouth Bridges)....
Ah that probably would have been a 143, which are even better!
On cold wet Manchester winter mornings in the late 80s, words can't describe how utterly miserable I'd feel as one of these horrors trundled round the curve into the equally miserable platform 14 at Manchester Piccadilly bound for Warrington. I could still cheerfully set one alight and watch it burn 😂
I love the Pacers and sprinters
Don't see what issue people have with them
I can just imagine the passengers in the "Rocket" seeing a Pacer. They'd think it was a train from paradise.
True! 😂😂😂
I love the voyager
I don't know why I love the look of these trains, but I do!
Ahaha, they are very quirky! :)
Please rewiev a polish EN57 with a cute nickname "kibel" (toilet in english), a nice competitor to this one. Be fast tho, they are being modernized or ditched and i dont think og ones have much time left
i was looking for a reveiw of these on your channel and everywhere else and you post this. thank you
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.
I LOVED The Pacers, Both Up North And In Wales, Don't Think You Can Really Judge A Pacer When Its Pulling Another Train.
Made cheap as chips by BR & BL, two brands not renowned for their quality at the time.
They weren’t helped by Northern’s slack maintenance regime of the interior.
Purely functional…. Except in summer where the heating was on to stop the engine overheating. So whilst being bounced along you were in an un-air conditioned oven.
Oh god, that sounds awful!
I've used northern about once a week for about 1-2 months and I've had no issues with them, maybe they've improved
I have to confess to really disliking them - I was commuting between Manchester and Bolton (just before electification) for a few years, so was using them a long time after their 'best before date' and in the depths of winter, so was seeing them at their worst - cold, draughty, and with condensation dribbling down the windows.
Before anyone points it out - I like the idea of them for when they were originally built for - as a dirt cheap stopgap measure to prove an idea / tied them over until something better can be purchased.
Just seen this video. The price of £4.60 for an anytime day return (inc railcard) in Aug 2020. It is now £5.45 in Aug 2024 (trainline) - 20% increase - and we wonder why people don't use the trains!!
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 😆.
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
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
Our local heritage railway (the Keith and Dufftown Railway) has acquired a Pacer - as memory serves, a Class 144 and, odd creature that I am, I am looking forward to it going into service to see just how good or bad it actually is.
I always used to call it a shed on wheels before I knew it was a class 142
It was just a practical train for what it was intended for. Unfortunately it was often pressed into service on whatever run needed a train due to shortages. I travelled on one from Hull to York and didn’t have a problem.
Yeah, they did often run on some questionable routes!
Pacers were great . . . For their intended use.
That is - deployment on shorter, lightly used branch lines as a stop gap to replace 1st generation DMUs and keep the lines they served open until more modern rolling stock was available.
The problem with Pacers is that they kept them in service for far too long and kept using them on longer and busier routes far after they should have been retired from service altogether.
At the end of the pacers life. The passengers who hated them realised they actually love.
True! 😭😭😭
@@SuperalbsTravels WAAAAAAAAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!
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.
They got rid of these once the brand new trains came into play. There are hardly that come in and out of Leeds. We have trains that have tables in them. They tend to be ones after these pacers (153-158/9)
I never minded them, but to be honest, bad experiences with (not pacer) trains in the UK made me quickly switch into my own vehicle and avoid trains. From a "only used for short trips every full moon" they are fine. but I won´t talk for anyone who uses them regularly.
The stop gap of these trains was hilariously long
A few comments on your quite intersting video (as someone who used Pacers in the North West quite a bit) - you refer to the Pacers as "based on a really old bus"; the Leyland National was in production all the way to 1985, the first year of Pacer production, therefore they were actually "based on concurrent bus technology" - their real failure was in the design (or lack of) the axles. It would have been interesting to see how they would have operated, and been regarded, had they been designed with small bogies.
You mention the rust and leaking issues - you were looking at 35-year-old trains, based on engineering designs dating back to 1972 (when the Leyland National first appeared), so it could be argued they stood up to their heavy use rather better than expected of a vehicle that was designed as a stopgap, pending the arrival in the early 2000s of new Provisional/Regional stock, so were only expected to operate for 20 years or so.
The doors aren't from Leyland Nationals (a 4-leaf folding door wasn't considered safe for rail operation). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyland_National#/media/File:Midland_Red_South_Leyland_National_NOE_551R.jpg
And the reason for the single row of luggage racks is that they were on the side that had the 2-seat bench (as it was unreasonable and rather dangerous to have them on the 3-seat side). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_142#/media/File:Blackpool_train_inside.JPG
Pacers with bogies = 153/155
I know a lot of people gave the Pacer a lot of grief for their ride, noise and questionable comfort (with reason of course) but at the end of the day, they still did their job and got people from A to B.
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.
Those trains were really bad in the rain, because they often leaked. You'd think north west England, famed for its wet weather, would at least have waterproof trains.
I’ve been one a 4 hour stream engine from Carlisle to York
It seems nobody mentioned the "flat wheel" (or what do you call this in Britain) that can be heard here in some of the shots. That rapid bam-bam-bam caused by a flat spot on a wheel. Certainly, it could happen to any train but most operators would fix it fairly soon.
Travelled on these many times between New Mills Central to Edale and Sheffield never an issue, now these new CAF Things have taken over, theres nothing but technical issues with them.
Want to drive one of these? The Midland Railway Butterley offers a Pacer driver experience day.
That is a lovely autorail Rail bus and what do you do to fixe the class 142 ?
8:10 ... The carriage in front looks like it's trying to head down the other line!
Ever wondered why no pacers ever made it to the home counties or Scotland?
Check out Gareth Dennis Railnatter ep62!
But then you'd have to watch Gareth Dennis.
I presume because of the way British Rail was organised at the time. In the early 1980s it was split into "sectors" - Intercity, Regional Railways and Network Southeast (with various name changes along the way) and Scottish services had their own operator, ScotRail.
Pacers were mainly a Regional Railways thing. Networtk Southeast had few diesel lines and commissioned only a small number of replacements - 159s, 165s and 166s (Turbos). Otherwise it continued to use old diesel stock, usually from around the late 1950s.
They have operated Dumfries to Carlisle services.
I’m so happy
I love a Northern Rail Pacer. My most favourite loco.
My favorite train i love the Pacers class 142
It's amazing how good Northern are now compared with then.
There's definitely been a transformation with the new trains.