Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 05:02:52 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Converting a bus into a train into a metaphor

Started by Zetetic, May 28, 2019, 08:23:13 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Zetetic




  "An old Pacer could be transformed into a community space, a café or even a new village hall.

This summer, rail industry partners will launch a competition offering community groups the opportunity to put forward their plans to convert a Pacer into a new public space. The Pacer will be donated by rolling stock company Porterbrook"









The Pacers have been the workhorses of the north's rail network, connecting communities for more than 30 years, but it is clear that they have outstayed their welcome.

Through this competition we can ensure that the Pacer can be transformed to serve a community near where it carried passengers in an entirely different way.



I travelled to school on a Pacer train and I look forward to getting on board again
to see how these old carriages will continue to provide a valuable service for many years to come.





Not far off forcing the Welsh to rename the Second Severn Crossing to the "Prince of Wales Bridge" (complete with semi-secret toadying ceremony for its namesake).

The Pacer, for those from foreign countries like London, is a train from 1980 made out of a bus from 1972. It has remained in use in some of the outposts of the empire like the Powerhouses of the North and the Western Retiree Zone. They're finally being withdrawn from service in the next year or so as criminally inaccessible.

On the plus side, they haven't been designed to actually cook passenger's shit like some of our trains.

Since this is a forum: What would you convert a Pacer into that would please Jake Berry MP (rode a Pacer to school) or Andrew Jones MP (has some odd ideas about what Northerners would really like)?

imitationleather

I think they should turn a Pacer into one of those food banks that has run out of everything that they have now.

Zetetic

In the interests of balance:

I am not sure my constituents will agree that this is an 'exciting opportunity', unless one of them is turned into a museum dedicated to highlighting years of under-investment in Northern transport

My personal suggestion would be to invite my fed up constituents to dismantle them piece by piece, a bit like when the Berlin Wall came down.

Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde)

Sebastian Cobb

I would convert it into scrap metal money so i didn't have to look at the frightful thing.

You can convert a bus into a cafe though; here's the Pitstop of Pitcaple, or 'the greasy bus' as it's commonly known.


idunnosomename

i think they should put chris grayling into a pacer and set it on fire

Al Tha Funkee Homosapien

Mobile Gegs?




(Sorry its all gone a bit Happy Shopper Cold War Steve)

Zetetic

Still worth asking Gregg if he'd be interested.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Zetetic on May 28, 2019, 08:23:13 PM
The Pacer, for those from foreign countries like London, is a train from 1980 made out of a bus from 1972.

That's funny. Over here, it's the chewy sweet from the 1980s that inspired the TingeFor_Now logo.

Stripes?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61l4F3Q-uBg

Buelligan

I'd convert one into a space rocket and fire invited guests into the heart of the sun.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 28, 2019, 08:32:40 PM
I would convert it into scrap metal money so i didn't have to look at the frightful thing.

You can convert a bus into a cafe though; here's the Pitstop of Pitcaple, or 'the greasy bus' as it's commonly known.



diesel-ation.

Buelligan

Could they be used to house low risk prisoners, like modern prison hulks?  This could be an answer to overcrowding and offer new profit opportunities to flagship British companies like G4S.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Buelligan on May 28, 2019, 09:48:13 PM
Could they be used to house low risk prisoners, like modern prison hulks?  This could be an answer to overcrowding and offer new profit opportunities to flagship British companies like G4S.

that might work. you'd have to putty-up the emergency door/window thing though but.

Blumf

I quite liked the Pacers.

It seems that one of their replacements, the Class 230, is equally as cheap, being recycled old London Underground rolling stock. Then there's it's name; hey ladies, wanna take a ride on the D-Train?

a duncandisorderly

is anybody else now jonesing for a bag of opal mints? I'm off to the co-op, see if I can find a modern equivalent.

MidnightShambler

The Liverpool to Manchester journey on the pacer is a right pain in the arse. It's not so bad as your lilting along through the suburbs until you get to Roby, where anything up to 11,000 people, all with rucksacks, get on and you spend the next two hours vowing to send absolutely everybody who has ever been involved with trains, from Ringo Starr to Shoko Asahara, a turd in the post.

Replies From View

Imagine an old bus being used as a community hall.  A long, thin community hall split over two levels.  Brilliant.

Icehaven

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on May 28, 2019, 09:49:22 PM
that might work. you'd have to putty-up the emergency door/window thing though but.

Errrrr, putty isn't free you know, do you think G4S are made of money?

Anyway during the Big Society debacle, there was a heartwarming story of how a knackered, draughty old donated bus had been turned into a frankly shitty looking library for a school, so I emailed the people responsible and asked if they really thought that was an acceptable substitute for a properly funded and built-for-purpose school library, and got some bullshit reply fobbing me off, then when I replied to that asking for further expansion I got a one line missive advising any further enquiries to some generic Big Society enquiry line, the flaky twats.

MidnightShambler

I always rub putty on myself before I go out for the night. All the birds love it....

Zetetic

Quote from: icehaven on May 30, 2019, 01:48:57 PM
Errrrr, putty isn't free you know, do you think G4S are made of money?
I'd have thought the point of a hulk is that they're hard to escape from by virtue of their situation - whether that's at sea or constantly travelling Britain's railways.

Icehaven

Quote from: Zetetic on June 02, 2019, 10:41:00 AM
I'd have thought the point of a hulk is that they're hard to escape from by virtue of their situation - whether that's at sea or constantly travelling Britain's railways.

So G4S would have to pay for fuel too?! You must be kidding.

Zetetic


Icehaven

Quote from: Zetetic on June 02, 2019, 11:56:59 AM
Get the prisoners to power it.

Ah like the old treadmills? Now you're talking.

Bobtoo

The original version was even more bus-like.

DSC_0792 by RichardB5, on Flickr

Sebastian Cobb

I think one of my most desolate experiences was getting a pacer to Manchester to visit a dying friend. It was during a heatwave and a massive fat lady was spilling into me while she eat a burger King out of her handbag. It stank.

buzby

Quote from: Bobtoo on June 02, 2019, 04:36:47 PM
The original version was even more bus-like.
[/url]
That's not the original - that is the third prototype RB004. The original prototype was the Leyland/BREL LEV1 (Leyland Experimental Vehicle 1), built in 1978 and which used unmodified Leyland National cab ends and side panels:

BREL also designed their own prototype in 1981 using the same body panels called the R3, but it was even worse than LEV1 and was regauged and sold to Northern Ireland.

The original bus windscreens were deemed unsafe from flying object damage (on test runs it was fitted with wire mesh 'riot shields' over the windscreens) and the bus cab panels  did not conform to the BR crash safety regs, which led to the cab ends being redesigned for the second prototype RB002 (built in 1984) to have impact resistant flat glass panels and more crash protection:

It was exported for test trials to the US and Canada, and after returning to the UK was then sent to Denmark and Sweden for trials, before also eventually being sent to Northern Ireland.

RB004 was built simultaneously to RB002 for UK testing.

Simultaneously to the RB-series single car prototypes, the LEV1 design developed into the 2-car Class 140 prototype between 1979-81, which eventually became the first Class 141 derivative of the Pacer family. The Class 140 had 'multiple unit' style gangway cab ends (similar to the standard Class 31x/50x EMUs from around the time)..

To cut costs, by the time it reached production the cab ends were changed to a non-gangway type based on the RB-series prototypes.

Blumf


buzby

#26
Quote from: Blumf on June 03, 2019, 12:10:06 AM
Was all the money going on the APT?
The Thatcher government basically stopped subsidising BR, so it could only spend it's own money from revenues. The project to electrify the East Coast Man Line started in 1981. The APT also started main line passenger trials in 1981 (in reality it was not ready but the government were pressuring BR to cancel the project), so by that time the bulk of the £47m it cost to develop had already been spent.

The three prototypes were withdrawn later that year after being vilified in the press over technical issues and after 3 years of further testing and modifications they were reintroduced into passenger service in 1984. They then ran as reliably as any other electric train on the WCML for nearly 18 months, including taking 20 minutes off the record for the London Euston-Glasgow diagram, but were withdrawn again in December 1985 when the plans for the production version were cancelled, pissing the £47m development cost up the wall after finally getting it working properly.

The only element of the APT-S production version that found use in BR was the design of the coaches, which became the Mk4 stock, built for use with the Class 91 locos in the InterCity 225s trains for the ECML at the end of the 80s (they have angled body sides as they were designed to be used with tilting gear)

The patents for the APT's tilt system were sold to Italy's Fiat Ferroviaria, who used them on their Pendolino tilting trains. Ferroviaria were later sold to Alsthom of France (who also ended up with GEC's heavy power and rail divisions), who in 2002 supplied the Class 390 Pendolinos to Angel Trains in the UK for lease to Virgin for the WCML (which still haven't beaten the APT's record from Euston to Glasgow).

phes

turn them into exciting leisure centres so CaB gets its own celebrity expert death-match thread

biggytitbo

They should be crushed into a tiny cube and launched into the sun.

Paul Calf