NORTHERN SENDS FIRST PACERS OFF LEASE

‘195s’ WORKING TO LINCOLN AND NOTTINGHAM

NORTHERN HAS sent its first three Class 142 Pacer units off lease. The sets, Nos 142016/022/025, were returned to owner Angel Trains and placed into store at Worksop before being broken up for scrap.

Spreading east of the Pennines: unit No 195105 at Doncaster on 15 October 2019.
Steve Widdowson

Northern’s Pacer fleet comprised 79 Class 142s owned by Angel Trains and 23 Class 144s owned by Porterbrook. The first Class 142 was retired in August and has been in storage at Newton Heath depot since then. Northern is to permanently retire at least 55 of its 102 Pacers by the end of the year. Delays in manufacture of its new trains have led Northern to retain a small number of Class 142s and all its Class 144s in service until May, operating in South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Manchester.

Meanwhile, Northern introduced its new Class 195 DMUs on Leeds to Lincoln and Leeds to Nottingham services from mid-December. Early completion of crew training and compliance testing enabled the introduction to take place a few days ahead of the December timetable change, after which 10 ‘195s’ were due to be operating across the two routes. The operator expected to have 52 of its 101 new CAF-built trains in service at the timetable change, with the remainder to be introduced in 2020.

Northern’s new CAF-built fleets are financed by Eversholt Rail and comprise 25x2-car and 33x3-car Class 195 DMUs and 31x3-car and 12x4-car Class 331 EMUs.