History
The fleet covers 20 DMUs which were procured by Translink. None of the Northern Irish rail network is electrified, and diesel multiple units have been used since nationalisation in the 1950s.
Prior to 2000, the rolling stock used by NIR consisted of a mixture of diesel multiple unit types that had entered service between 15 and 25 years previously. The main type was the Class 80, based on the Mark 2b bodyshell. These were a fleet of 3-car and 4-car units built in two batches between 1973 and 1978, with a total of 22 sets eventually constructed. Additional capacity on the network was provided with the entry into service of the Class 450, which consisted of nine 3-car units that entered service in 1985 and were based on the Mark 3 bodyshell. However, chronic underinvestment in the railway meant that by the millennium these were still the newest domestic trains in service. Indeed, by 2000 it was estimated that the network as a whole required investment totalling £183 million simply to bring it up to basic safety standards.
Read more about this topic: NIR Class 4000
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)