Prototype The last pacers

Bazzmund

Active Member
The public are not diesel enthusiasts. They may not even be steam enthusiasts. But they visit heritage lines to see the steam traction of yesteryear.

I'm not so sure, when the West Somerset had a diesels to the seaside event it was quite popular. I think philistines with no imagination who think anything before their birth date was steam powered automatically assume that anything old on a railway is steam.

I am personally quite happy that they have managed to survive into preservation. Quite cheap to run and unlike the omnishambles that is the IEP virtually indestructible.
 

Buntobox

Active Member
I can't imagine anyone missing these awful things. I saw them as a personification of the enforced penny-pinching that Thatcher's government imposed on BR in the 1980s. It was as if she/they wanted the railways to fail and tried to ensure they would by instructing BR to purchase the cheapest, nastiest, most uncomfortable rolling stock they could lay their hands on, thereby forcing people to abandon the train for their car in the interests of comfort, as a few correspondents here have said they actually did. Let's not forget the Serpell Report either from that period which took its cue from the same mean-spirited playbook.
 
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JasonBz

Western Thunderer
I have always thought that the old maxim that a third class ride was better than a first class walk was very true in regard to these units - and walking, or waiting hopefully for a bus, could have been the only alternative on some of those more marginal services that were the subject of Pacer-isation.
 

Genghis

Western Thunderer
Although many Pacers finished their time assigned to duties that they were not suited to (eg Manchester commuter trains), they did the job they were intended to do: reduce operating costs on lightly used lines that would otherwise have closed. That ought to be their legacy.
David
 

Matt.S.

Western Thunderer
I'm definitely in a minority - I served my apprenticeship on the FGW west fleet and have happy memories of settling into the tall chapman seats as the L10 engine dropped into the familiar steady hum leaving South Bristol, whisking me home.

There were definitely maintenance headaches - the huge horizontal fire bottles behind the front skirts were heavy with little room to move, the voith to final drive driveshaft was awkwardly long and heavy, the vehicle sized TCA arial cumbersome to change out, the doors would drop out of sync and baffle some crews.

But the cabs were large, light and airy, the electrical cabinets with the big removeable panels were a godsend compared to folding yourself into a 15x with heavy, dark doors and the gangways with no flexitor mounts were a joy to switch out. Personally (and maybe selfishly) no one else really cared about fixing them so I spent a lot of time getting to grips with their quirks.

One of the things that tickles most people is the BR official tool for setting the tracking - the manual reads something close to "once placed back on it's wheelsets, run around the yard and check wheelset alignment using fishing line across the back of both wheelsets".
 
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