Rumours that Northern Rail’s passengers might have to endure thirty-year old four-wheeled bus-derived Pacers for a good few years yet may be ill-founded.

In an annoucement that that’s a superb example of what Neal Stephenson’s novel “Anathem” described as “Bullshytte, Rail Minister Andrew Jones is quoted in Rail,

“All Pacer vehicles on the Northern franchise will be withdrawn by 2020 due to incompatibility of the Pacer vehicles with the vision for economic growth and prosperity in the North, as per the announcement by the Secretary of State in February 2015.”

No doubt one or two of these almost universally unloved vehicles will be preserved. And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if their replacements turn out to be Vivarail’s D-Train, rebuilds of redundant London Underground District Line trains which are actually slighly older than the Pacers.