FIRST North Western have purchased 27 new super train units, and it is fair to assume most will be used on the stockbroker commuter belt lines into Manchester and Liverpool.
Some may even be used on the Manchester Airport turns to Blackpool (North), Carlisle and Sheffield.
The chances of any being allocated to the Blackpool (South)-Colne East Lancs line are as good as FNW's managing director turning up at a Buckingham Palace garden party in drag.
After a decade and more of having to put up with the rocking, rolling, pitching, yawning Class 142 units (described by FNW's own MD as 'dire'), I had hoped that a measure of compassion may light on the corporate breast and a couple of the 27 super trains re-earmarked for us.
I did suggest to the MD that if he employed a 'next for sacking' gambit, the allocation officials may abandon the 'next for scrapping equals Blackpool (South)-Colne' policy, but he seemed reluctant and, short of Her Majesty taking a semi in Brierfield and shopping in Blackburn, I don't see him changing his mind and grasping the nettle.
It looks very much like that when the Class 142s finally drop to bits (it can't be long now), we shall be getting repainted, clapped-out Sprinters deemed unfit even for the Manchester-Clitheroe turn.
Put it this way -- if any of the super, duper, state-of-the-art 27 units turn up on the Colne run, I and many others will be gobsmacked.
DAVID PRATT, Plantation Street, Accrington.
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