Turning Pacer trains into village halls? Send them down south instead

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Plans to repurpose these rusty old trains isn’t even a bad joke. Where’s the focus on decent rail services in northern England?

It was one of those press releases so silly I had check I wasn’t about to fall for some ridiculous prank: could the department for transport (DfT) really be heralding an “exciting” new plan to offer northern towns the chance to bid for a knackered old Pacer train to turn into “a community space, cafe or new village hall”?

I refreshed my browser, checked the URL didn’t include the second level domain joke.uk, and gasped. It was real. Rail minister Andrew Jones really had said: “Through this competition we can ensure that the Pacer can be transformed to serve a community near where it carried passengers in an entirely different way. What we need now are creative and exciting proposals from the public, alongside ideas from businesses keen to support this competition, as we say goodbye to Pacers on our railway.”

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2KdZuNB

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