Looking for a late Christmas present for someone who loves commuting by rail? A company is offering carriages from a Southeastern Metro train for sale.
Romic Group, which is based in Northamptonshire, has put the carriages from the Class 465 Networker train on the market as an “end-of-year offer”.
The carriages are “ideal for cafés/catering facilities, glamping conversions, educational facilities, and a host of other uses”, the company says on its website. No price is given, but Romic can even arrange delivery – although it is likely to be too late to have a train in your drive for Christmas.
The Networker trains, then state-of-the-art, were introduced under British Rail from 1992, and have endured through privatisation and several different companies running them with varying standards of maintenance. They are now showing their age and a number have been withdrawn in recent years. Newer trains, branded City Beam, have since been introduced to supplement the fleet.
Earlier this year Southeastern invited rail companies to bid to build a new fleet of trains to replace the Networkers.
Potential buyers could include the many developers in SE London or north Kent, where the trains run. In 2008, a slam-door train carriage was moved to Deptford High Street and used as a café before work began on the Deptford Market Yard development. It was later taken to Morden Wharf in Greenwich for storage.
Romic specialises in selling second-hand trains around the world, recently selling a number of old high-speed InterCity 125 trains to Nigeria to be used on a new service in Lagos.
Details of how to enquire about the carriages are on the Romic website.
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