‘Sardine service’ fear with Pacer trains axed by 2019

The days are finally numbered for the hated Pacer trains which have become synonymous with Oldham.

They will have to be scrapped by 2019 because they will no longer meet disabled accessibility laws.

Some of the trains, built in the 1980s by a hard-up British Rail as an experiment to see if trains could be built using bus parts, became known as the “Oldham Five” when the Department for Transport insisted on sending them to other parts of the country when the Oldham loop closed for conversion to Metrolink.

Now, however, there are fears that Greater Manchester’s current overcrowding problems will get worse once the Pacers go.

Steven Clark, Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive’s rail programme director, said: “While national rolling stock plans are unclear, the previous government had developed a policy of not ordering any new diesel vehicles.

“Should this policy continue, and given the requirements for more capacity to meet growth and the need to scrap existing fleets within 10 years, it is not clear that the current heavy rail electrification programmes alone can provide enough stock to resource future services.”

Mr Clark and his colleagues are to spend the next six months investigating the case for “tram-trains” — trams which can travel on ordinary railway lines as well as tram tracks.

He added: “Given that trams typically generate much higher demand (and hence revenue and social benefit) on previously poorly-performing urban rail lines it would seem that they are a good solution to the issue of rolling stock capacity.

“This would make the electrification of these routes much more worthwhile. The net operating costs of tram trains are likely to be cheaper than the costs of equivalent heavy rail services.”

There are plans to electrify the line from Manchester Victoria to Liverpool — which would give Oldhamers easier access to the main line to Scotland — as well as to Wigan and Bolton.

Oldham councillor Richard Knowles said: “A lot of routes in Greater Manchester are diesel routes and if you had to electrify them to make use of tram-train, it would greatly increase the costs.

“We need as hybrid tram train which could operate on both diesel and electric lines. This does happen in some places.”