Northern Rail has supplied RAIL with the full rostered duties for the Class 319s now in use in the North West.
The four-car electric multiple units are used on newly-electrified routes between Manchester Airport and Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Victoria and Liverpool Lime Street and to Wigan North Western.
The Class 319s transferred from Govia Thameslink Railway. Initially 20 will be used, but the operator says a further ten should move north this year.
In spite of their age, the "cast off" 319's are sliding door, 100mph, chopper controlled refurbished mark3 emu's. Apart from AC drives they are still state-of-the-art. The 30x's of the 1960's were resistance controlled slammers, obsolete when new. Even the 1970's 312's have been scrapped. Why not be glad of the wires and the ambience rather than nit-picking?
There is nothing wrong with the 319's granted they ought to have been refurbished with air conditioning, but apart from that, they are relatively good units which are much better than the one's they replaced. Electrification is often a complex balance between the monies needed for the physical infrastructure, and where you could save additional funds. Alas in the future, many of these projects will rely on reconditioned trains from other regions in order for schemes to be viable.
Northern will be getting 20 Class 319's during this year and onto next year and First Great Western to get the 319's from next year. Southeastern are hiring some Class 319's as some of their Class 375's Electrostar fleet are to be out of service to head to Derby to be refurbished & repainted whilst the rest of the 375's remains in service with 376's Electrostar and 465's & 466's Networkers fleets to also be refurbished & repainted.
Robert Turvey - 29/05/2015 12:44
When I was a lad way back in the 1960s there were EMUs operating on local services to Crewe, all platforms at Liverpool Lime Street were wired for them and they were quiet and efficient. Now, some 50 years later, we have EMUs operating out of Lime Street on local services on admittedly different routes but is this really progress? In the 1960s the EMUs were new, todays are cast offs from the south, is this progress?