Tom A
Goat among sheep
Same here: they do the Hull-Doncaster stopping trains. They're horrible old sheds - noisy, hard-riding, draughty and uncomfortable. Unfortunately, I've not heard that there's any prospect of their being replaced any time soon. And no, they're not at all crashworthy. This is what happened when one missed a signal back in 1999, got onto the West Coast Main Line and was stuffed up the back at 50mph by a northbound express:
Winsford Rail Crash report (pdf)
It is that incident that drove home to me how frail the Pacers are. The carnage was very similar to the damage suffered by the trains involved in the Clapham Junction crash (the one that resulted in the phasing out of the Mk. 1s). Fortunately that Pacer was empty (otherwise they would have definitely have been many fatalities), but it just takes a fateful error or failure in safeguards to result in a bloodbath, and the press will be wondering why we hadn't gotten rid of them decades earlier. The potential is even greater now the Pacers really are past their projected operational lifespan, and many of them are in very poor condition, but are still expected to run rush-hour services crammed with commuters.