First Trans-Pennine have announced more new trains for the North and Scotland. In keeping with their new image as an inter-city operator, the new rolling stock will be inter-city style rather than the regional type trains in use on their routes at the moment.
Half of the new trains will be 125mph EMUs for their Anglo-Scottish services from Liverpool and Manchester that run up the west coast main line. More interesting is that the other half, for the Manchester-Newcastle route, will be locomotive-hauled stock using class 68 locomovives. Some of these locomotives are already in use with Chiltern Trains hauling extensively refurbished Mk3 stock, but Trans-Pennine’s order represents the first new loco-hauled daytime stock since the ECML Mk4 fleet in the 1980s.
It may well be that the decision to go for loco-hauled trains is a consequence of the postponed electrification of the route. Separating the traction from the coaching stock means that when the wires finally go up over Standedge, it will be a matter of swapping electric locomotives for the diesels, with the same coaches.
The diesel-hauled stock will be needed for the foreseeable future to run services from Liverpool to Scarborough and Manchester Airport to Middlesborough, neither of which are likely to be fully electrified within the next twenty years. The currently proposed trains will be displaced to these routes once the bimodal Hitachi stock comes on line in 2019.