An East Midlands Railway Class 153 train will be hired in by Northern Trains Limited (Northern) each day.
From 31st December 2019, no trains were allowed to be in service if they didn’t comply with the Persons with Reduced Mobility regulations (PRM).
Class 153s do not meet the PRM regulations; however, Northern Trains Limited now have a dispensation the grants the Class 153s to be exempt from the regulations.
Under this dispensation, Class 153s need to be coupled to a PRM spec unit (Class 150, 155, 156, 158), unless being operated on the following routes:
- Huddersfield to Bradford via Halifax
- Huddersfield to Castleford via Wakefield
- Huddersfield to Sheffield via Penistone
- Doncaster to Scunthorpe
- Barton upon Humber to Cleethorpes
Credit: Langton Photography
One East Midlands Railway 153 will be hired in by Northern each day to operate their Barton-upon-Humber to Cleethorpes train service. However, there is no set unit that will be hired in by Northern, so may change every day.
Other 153s could be on their way to Northern, to replace the 153s in the worst condition, but there is yet to be any confirmation of this.
A spokesperson for Northern told RailAdvent “Accessibility is a priority for Northern and we are committed to making our network as user-friendly and as inclusive as possible.”
The spokesperson continued “We will continue to operate Class 153 trains on some routes across our network to provide our customers with a rail service. Where possible the 153 carriages will be coupled to other accessible units but, on some occasions, it may be necessary to run the Class 153s on their own. We have received a Class 153 from colleagues at East Midlands Railway and will utilise this to provide a rail service to customers on the Barton line prior to EMR taking ownership of the route in the future.”
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Responses
A triful innacurate as 153355 is on its way to Liverpool at 1247 today. Looks like EMR send up a different one every day to strengthen the bartons the following day and as EMR bring the northern 153 back lincoln every night the EMR one gets swapped out.
This isn’t correct. EMR is contracted to provide a Class 153 unit daily to operate the Barton-on-Humber line which remains a Northern service. There is no fixed train and a different one will appear each day in rotation. No 153s have been transferred to Northern from EMR.
So northern scrap their trams and replace them with even worse rolling stock
What trams?
TFW doesn’t have any 156’s and need every 153 they currently run believe me…
We also have an ex East Midlands 153 unit on TfW North Wales Coast line. It stands out a mile coupled up to a white/red TfW unit.
Good on Northern which means that the Class 153s cascaded from East Midlands Railway will operate on local services in South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, South Yorkshire and South Humberside. Why not use them in County Durham, North Yorkshire and East Riding of Yorkshire. Or inherit more Class 153s and Class 156s from Transport for Wales, ScotRail or GWR to be used in the Northeast.