MILLIONS are being spent on revitalising the north’s rail services – but passengers in Warrington are facing the prospect of travelling in revamped London Underground trains.

Private operator Vivarail is understood to be reconditioning unwanted Tube trains from the District Line and at least two potential bidders for the 2016 northern franchise are said to be interested in the rolling stock.

Seasoned travellers were hoping and praying that the franchise renewal process would spell the end for the deeply unpopular Pacer trains used across the north.

Once described by former Home Secretary Jack Straw as ‘buses on coal wagons’, commuters using the stopper service to Manchester Oxford Road from Sankey through Warrington Central to Glazebrook will be very familiar with the scourge of the Pacers.

Introduced as a stopgap solution to rolling stock shortages 30 years ago, the carriages have limped on thanks to the perennial race to the bottom on our public transport systems.

But mind the doors – Prime Minister David Cameron, and Cheshire MP and Chancellor George Osborne, vowed the Pacers would soon be history.

Except that’s not the tune their Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has been dancing to recently, hedging his bets over whether the clapped-out trundlers are heading for the knacker’s yard.

And if you ask the Department of Transport whether the old Tube trains – complete with wedged-in diesel engines – are heading northwards then officials go all coy and tell us ‘the industry knows best’ and we’ll have to wait and see.

This is the same outstanding logic which has worked so well in the utility and banking industries of late that it’s hard to disagree (ahem).

If you couple the prospect of old Tube trains, still three decades old, rattling through Town, coupled with the truly baffling decision to adopt the Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Airport via Newton for electric trains, rather than the Warrington Central line, many may feel the great rail revolution has hit the buffers locally.

And that’s even before you consider the HS2 fiasco which threatens to rip up half of Culcheth and Glazebury while delivering zero benefits to the borough. Third-class.

  •  Final scoreline aside, I’m sold on the concept of the World Club Series and hope it returns for 2016.

The HJ was bouncing, the build-up was well-handled and a 13,000-plus crowd was treated to a nip-and-tuck contest where the Wire lads emerged with pride, if not craniums, intact.

(I must confess I was quite taken with the official programme – inspired contributions all round and a great keepsake for an historic night.) Quite why referee Ben Thaler was entrusted with the inaugural contest in a fledgling competition is a question which only the RFL can answer. Even two stalwart St George fans I collared later couldn’t defend Kevin Penny’s first-half near-decapitation.

But you’ve got to be brave in RL, when the Sky paymasters are willing to fork out 70 per cent more to cover the mostly-tedious two-horse race which masquerades as our national sport.

So if, with a few tweaks and a January start, the series is taken into a second year, it should remain a tantalising prospect.

  •  Former council leader John Gartside’s measured assessment of the pressing need for the two bypass bridges is spot on.

His administration was responsible for much of the impetus behind ‘boom town Warrington’ and his input should be noted. And the same should go for his predecessor and ex-Warrington South MP Mike Hall.

I’m confident Terry O’Neill and Mike Hannon can plot a course to future prosperity, starting with the overhaul of Bank Street.