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:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)