London Underground D78 Stock Conversion

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So I've been doing some more railroad browsing on the website, and this is the one of the news/rumor I've stumbled upon lately (it's actually 7 December today as I'm writing this... but I think I'll still stick to my weekly schedule and post this whenever this is supposed to be published).

Some time ago I posted about the Pacer used on brand lines in the North of England. It's a 2-car DMU with 4 steel wheels attached to each car that's based on the body of a Leyland bus. I've ridden them for hours at a time during my trips to England, and to be honest, they are loud, rattly, the ride is really crappy. They've been in service for quite a number of years now. Recently, certain people have started asking about replacement. In an effort to save money, one party has proposed something rather quite interesting, which is to take the retired D78 Stock from London Underground, sling a diesel engine under the floor, hook it up to a generator so it can power the traction motors.



Now apparently the D Stock shared some common features with a mainline EMU that was also built by Metro Cammell, and it already ran on a stretch of trackage shared with London Overground, therefore it was already mainline certified.

I don't believe there are any details about how this converted DEMU is like, but it's definitely something very interesting and keep some tabs on. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what the finished product is like.

Btw I found out about this from reading Train Orders, the thread is linked here. Pictures and videos come from Wikimedia Commons and YouTube.

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