Train leasing company Porterbrook have announced that some class 319 dual-voltage EMUs are to be converted into bi-mode trains for use on Northern.

It’s an interestng development. These trains were built for Thameslink in the late 1980s, operating on 25kV AC overhead along the Midland main line to Bedford, and on 750V DC third rail on the Southern Region, switching between the two at Farringdon.

It’s that dual-voltage capability that makes them suitable for conversion, since there’s already a DC power bus running the length of the train carrying traction current from the 3rd rail shoes on the driving trailers to the motor coach in the middle. The plan is to add underfloor diesel generator sets to the driving trailers, enabling the train to run on diesel power away from electrified routes while retaining AC overhead capability while running under the wires.

Rebuilding thirty-year old trains in this manner seems a bit “make do and mend” compared with shiny new trains. But it does say something about the build quality of rolling stock from the later years of British Rail that such a thing is being considered.

Manchester Oxford Road is a strange place. The cramped inner-city location hemmed in by buildings on all sides makes it look like a full-sized model railway rather than a real station. Here a Trans-Pennine Express emerges from the fiddle yard between the two buildings that hide the hole in the sky

New to Manchester are the former Thameslink class 319s, now used on Liverpool to Manchester services. This is one of the liveries of the forthcoming Graham Farish model.

The other new train to be seen in the Manchester area is First Trans-Pennine’s electric class 350s used on the Manchester to Glasgow run. Unlike Northern’s former London hand-me-downs, this line gets brand-new trains.

A Northern class 150 sprinter enters from the Manchester Piccadilly direction. The platforms of the station are too short for inter-city length trains; back in the days when Virgin Trains operated between Manchester and Scotland their HSTs and Voyagers couldn’t stop because they were too loong for the model railway like platforms.

A lot of freight  passes through Oxford Road, mostly intermodal trains cannying boxes of Made-on-China goods to the vast container terminal at Trafford Park. Her’s a modellable short train made up of two pairs on Freightliner container twins. I’m guessing these wagons are returning from maintenance; quite a few of these wagons were undergoing tyre turning at Longsight.

Oxford Road is an extremely busy station, especially for its size, and sees trains from four different train operating companies. Here’s a pair a venerable class 158 Sprinters on an East Midlands Trains’ Liverpool to Norwich working.

And finally, an Arriva Trains Wales class 175 on a working from North Wales. Sometimes known as “Hippos”, they’re hardly the most attractive-looking trains on the network, but in terms of passenge environment they’re one of the better modern units.