Rail firm must replace nearly 200 trains a year - and bosses have no idea how much it will cost

The region's biggest rail operator will have to replace three-quarters of its trains to meet government targets, the Manchester Evening News can reveal.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request has found that train operator, Northern, still uses 619 diesel-only trains - all of which will have to be removed in the next 17 years - by 2040.

But there is uncertainty over whether Northern will achieve this target as the full costs of removing of all diesel trains have not been outlined yet and it is not clear how some routes will be electrified.

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Earlier this month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced plans for ‘Network North’, a series of transport projects which would be funded by the £36bn saved from cancelling the HS2 line to Manchester.

As part of the plan, certain train lines in the North including the Hope Valley line between Sheffield and Manchester would be electrified. However, according to data from the Department for Transport (DfT), there are still 2,900 diesel-only vehicles operating across the country.

This means 170 passenger trains would have to be removed from the network every year to meet the 2040 deadline. An FOI request to Northern, the biggest rail operator in the region, found that only 24 per cent of the network across the North of England is electrified.

The FOI also found that 619 of Northern’s 958 trains are diesel-only. In 2018, the government set a deadline for all diesel trains to be removed from the national railway network by 2040 with a net-zero carbon emissions target of 2050 introduced the