CAF is building new DMUs for West Midlands Trains and Transport for Wales, and has recently completed deliveries of Class 195 units to Northern. WMT’s four-car No. 196101 makes a striking sight as it passes Henley-in-Arden during a recent test run.
FRASER PITHIE
DESPITE the uncertainty surrounding the future structure of Britain’s rail network, new passenger trains worth billions of pounds continue to roll off production lines destined for UK train operators.
Factories in England, Wales, Spain, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Poland and Hungary are busily engaged in assembling new trains for the UK, using components sourced from many locations in Europe and further afield.
The complexity of this international effort has been brought into sharp focus by the global Covid-19 pandemic, which has introduced further pressures into delivery schedules already disrupted by production and supply problems, software issues, reliability ‘teething troubles’, and a shortage of specialist engineers to test and commission new fleets.
The sudden and unexpected collapse of passenger numbers since March 2020 has thrown the plans (financial and operational) of train companies into chaos.
Instead of celebrating the introduction of new train fleets, and the extra seats and new features they deliver, operators now have to figure out whether their carefully crafted rolling stock plans are still relevant to the ‘new normal’.
Since our last update in 2018, hundreds of new trains have entered service with GWR, LNER, Northern, TransPennine Express (TPE), Hull Trains, ScotRail, Thameslink, Great Northern, Greater Anglia, and London Overground.
Hig-profile
Significantly, the largest and most high-profile new train order of the last decade – the Government’s £5.7billion InterCity Express Programme (IEP) – was completed in September with the delivery of the last of 122 Hitachi IET sets (866 vehicles) for GWR and LNER. The final set to be accepted by LNER was pre-production No. 801201, although as this issue went to press Nos. 801212/218 were still to carry their first passengers.
Hitachi has also delivered 36 AT300 bi-mode trains (22 five-car and 14 nine-car Class 802) with more powerful engines and larger fuel tanks for West of England routes. Twenty-four similar trains were delivered to TPE (19 Class 802/2s) and Hull Trains (five Class 802/3s) in 2019, and are now operating the Liverpool-Newcastle-Edinburgh and Hull to King’s Cross routes, respectively.
Hitachi’s Newton Aycliffe factory is in the process of assembling five five-car Class 803 EMUs for First Group’s East Coast Trains open access operation, which is due to start in October 2021. These sets will be fitted with batteries for low-speed operation in depots or if overhead line equipment (OLE) fails. Painted bodyshells were delivered from Japan earlier this year, and the first complete set is expected to appear shortly.
Having completed the massive IET order, there were fears of job losses at Newton Aycliffe, but Hitachi has secured two further contracts for new trains, based on the AT300 platform.