Back on the rails

Provincial rail passengers rattling through the countryside in crude, hard riding Pacer trains might not realise that these thirty-something vehicles were developed from the 1970s Leyland National bus.

Finding cost effective replacements has proved a headache for their operators, but now rail entrepreneur Adrian Shooter is planning to create a fleet of 75 Pacer substitutes by re-cycling soon-to-be-redundant London Underground District Line trains. These 30-35-year old, full sized D78 ‘surface stock’ electric multiple units had previously been earmarked for scrap. In January (2015) London Underground began replacing them with more examples of its air-conditioned, walk through ‘S Stock’ trains, which already work the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines.

‘I’ve had this idea for about three years,’ says Shooter, a mechanical engineer by training, with nearly fifty years experience in rail, most notably as managing director and chairman of Chiltern Railways.

He’s formed a company called Vivarail, which will transform electric urban trains that take power from third rails into rural diesel electrics, using 3.2 litre, 5-cylinder, 200bhp Ford ‘Duratorq’ diesel light commercial vehicle power units to drive generators, which in turn will power the train’s existing traction motors.