One of the scandals of the UK rail network, is the train services between Liverpool and Manchester.  The lines from these two cities to London were fully electrified by the mid-sixties and even Glasgow was reached in 1974. The details are on Wikipedia.

But the train services are still run mainly using some of Northern Rail’s scrapyard specials or Class 142 and Class 150 diesels as they prefer to call them. Are there two as important cities anywhere in the world, which has to put up with such terrible elderly rolling stock on a rail route between them.

It has always puzzled me, why this train service wasn’t electrified, as after all both cities are served by electrified main lines.

I have read that both Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher didn’t like trains, but surely electrifying the route between Liverpool and Manchester would give a boost to both cities.