[from Helen Pidd, The Guardian, Wed 29 May 2019]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turning Pacer trains into village halls? Send them down south instead<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Plans to repurpose these rusty old trains isn\u2019t even a bad joke.\nWhere\u2019s the focus on decent rail services in northern England?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was one of those press\nreleases so silly I had check I wasn\u2019t about to fall for some ridiculous\nprank: could the department for transport (DfT) really be heralding an\n\u201cexciting\u201d new plan to offer northern towns the chance to bid for a knackered\nold Pacer train to turn into \u201ca community space, cafe or new village hall\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I refreshed my browser, checked the URL didn\u2019t include the second level domain joke.uk, and gasped. It was real. Rail minister Andrew Jones really had said: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThrough this competition we can ensure that the Pacer can be transformed to serve a community near where it carried passengers in an entirely different way. What we need now are creative and exciting proposals from the public, alongside ideas from businesses keen to support this competition, as we say goodbye to Pacers on our railway.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Jones, whose government has cut council budgets so\ndramatically that they will have lost almost 60p in the \u00a31 for local\nservices in the decade to 2020, was actually suggesting that community spaces\nshuttered as a result of his administration\u2019s austerity drive be replaced by\ntrain carriages with toilets less modern than many at Glastonbury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A government not so much tin-eared as deaf, blind and so out of\ntouch with northern England that it tried to sell this insulting, laughable\nidea as something so thrilling that we would actually compete<\/em> for rusty old\ntrains long abandoned by Iran as too antiquated. Perhaps the civil\nservant who came up with it could totally see hipsters in Hackney turning them\ninto bars serving cocktails out of old British Rail mugs with ironic names such\nas Pacer Colada or Screwdriver (Anyone? Train\u2019s Broken Down). As Wigan MP Lisa\nNandy put it: \u201cIf this is the \u2018northern powerhouse\u2019 they can keep it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a very regular rail passenger in the north of England, I\noften have the extreme displeasure of travelling on Pacer trains. Famously\ncobbled together on the cheap, using the shell of a Leyland bus welded to a\nfreight wagon frame, they went out of service in the south-east of England many\nyears ago, but the government has allowed successive private rail companies to\nkeep them rumbling on in the north. Never mind the fact that the doors jam, the\nroofs leak and the windows won\u2019t close (you\u2019ll have to keep your coat on and\nhood up in your new village hall).I\ntook one with my 10-year-old stepdaughter a few weeks ago. She lives in the\nMidlands, where Pacers went out of fashion before she was born, and wanted to\nknow why the bench seats had no headrests and were all facing one direction\nlike on a bus. Why are the brakes screeching like that? (\u201cFlange squeal\u201d on\ntight corners caused by the long wheelbase and lack of ride-smoothing bogies:\nthemselves a modern luxury invented in 1874) If you flush the toilet does it\nreally all end up on the track? (Yes) Why aren\u2019t there any tables? (We\nnortherners do not deserve such opulence) Can I plug in my iPod Touch? (dream\non, honeybun).\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pacers were supposed to be phased out as part of the Northern\nrail franchise, which is so badly run that the mayors of Greater Manchester and\nLiverpool city region on Wednesday called for it to be taken under\ngovernment control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The National Railway Museum in York was hoping to put a Pacer on\ndisplay in its history section this year but had to postpone the exhibition\nafter Northern admitted it still needed them in service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jonathan Reynolds, MP for Stalybridge and Hyde in Greater Manchester, couldn\u2019t see his constituents bidding for a Pacer cafe or playgroup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am not sure my constituents will agree that this is an \u2018exciting opportunity\u2019, unless one of them is turned into a museum dedicated to highlighting years of under-investment in northern transport,\u201d he told the Manchester Evening News. \u201cMy personal suggestion would be to invite my fed up constituents to dismantle them piece by piece, a bit like when the Berlin Wall came down.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n There may come a time in the distant future \u2013 when a new\nhigh-speed rail line in the north from east to west has been built and it no\nlonger takes almost three hours, one change and a fair wind to get from\nLiverpool to Hull \u2013 when we are ready to enjoy Pacers ironically. But not yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2022 Helen Pidd is the\nGuardian\u2019s north of England editor<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/may\/29\/pacer-trains-village-halls-send-down-south<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [from Helen Pidd, The Guardian, Wed 29 May 2019] Turning Pacer trains into village halls? Send them down south instead Plans to repurpose these rusty old trains isn\u2019t even a bad joke. Where\u2019s the focus on decent rail services in … Continue reading