Engineering Focus

This week I was fortunate enough to be invited to an event in Liverpool called “Rail & the Liverpool City Region - The Track to Growth”. The event was an opportunity for city, transport and business leaders to publicly give their full backing to Transport for the North's (TfN) Strategic Transport Plan (STP), and it was also an opportunity to celebrate 5 years since the formation of the Liverpool City Region, and the £340m that has been invested in rail over that period. As part of the STP, Transport for the North have set out £40bn worth of investment in rail which amongst other things will see Liverpool connected to HS2 and Manchester by a dedicated 2 track high speed line. This is something the city has been demanding since the route of phase 2 between the West Midlands and North West was announced. Whilst business and political leaders have been supportive of HS2, with benefits coming to the region from 2026 , they were never fully satisfied with Liverpool's connection

Not the most eye catching of titles I grant you, however it is ( I hope ) accurate. Because, as far as things stand the new class 331 EMUs which are being introduced by Northern will begin to enter service this year. This is despite yesterday's announcement that longer platforms at Leeds station will not be completed until 2021. This means unfortunately that Northern will not be able to operate 6 car formations formed of 2, 3 car trains working in multiple. However Northern will be introducing it's new trains as they complete testing, which means that the first new units should start to enter service this year. I wrote on Wednesday how I feel that the mainstream media usually only ever seems to focus on the negative and this story certainly wasn't any different. What drove me to write this blog though is the choice of wording used, headlines like “ Longer six-carriage trains won't be arriving ” and “ Northern's long six-carriage trains delayed by two years ”, I

Pacers (class 142/144s) have become the trains that passengers love to hate and the mainstream media loves to use as a weapon to attack government policy with. Now however the end is in sight for the units which are now over 30 years old. By the end of this year (2019) the entire fleet of Pacers operated by Northern will have been phased out. In order to achieve this new trains are being built and some existing trains are being delivered as they come off lease from other operators. The good news for passengers is brand new trains are on the way, the introduction of which will see the phasing out completely of Pacers on routes operated by Northern. It is unfortunate however that the introduction of the class 195 DMUs has been delayed. The first class 195 was delivered to Northern for testing in June 2018, and it was expected that it would enter service in December 2018. Unfortunately during testing faults were found, and it wasn't until December 2018 that the units were cleared f