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Today, one of the old British Rail built ‘Pacer’ trains that were retired last year was donated to and installed at its new home this morning.
Vehicle 55808 from Class 144 No 144008 was built in Derby in 1986 and spent its entire working life based at Neville Hill depot in Leeds. During its career, the carriage had covered 3,227,769 miles in passenger service.
Its final resting place is at Fagley Primary School in Bradford (a town where these trains were regular visitors). The train’s to be used as a science lab for students to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning. Fagley won the Pacer carriage in the Department for Transport (DfT) sponsored ‘Transform a Pacer’ competition, being selected for their creativity and their potential to engage with and serve the local community.
Fagley Primary School is the first of three winners of the DfT ‘Transform a Pacer’ competition to receive their carriage. The other winners are Airedale NHS Trust and Platform 1 – a Huddersfield mental health charity. They will receive their carriages in coming months.

Owned by Porterbrook Leasing who have generously donated the car – and paid for it to be moved to the school. The vehicle had been in store at the Harry Needle Railroad Company site at Worksop where HNRC staff donated their services to strip the vehicle of several tonnes of weight in the form of engine and drive shaft, fuel tank, coupler and assorted pipework. The train was moved to its new home on a low-loader by Reid Freight Heavy Haulage. Needless to say, maneuvering a train car through the streets of Bradford and installing it in position at a school isn’t the simplest of tasks but it was handled with aplomb by the experts from Reid who carry out jobs like this all the time.
Waiting to greet the new arrival were staff and pupils from the school, along with staff from Porterbrook who supervised the formal handover. Here’s a selection of pictures from the event.







So, it’s one down, two more to go – and one of those is going to make this installation look easy peasy! I’ll be blogging about that particular event when it happens, so watch this space.
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