Masterplan Anything goes
Testing Times
Track plans to get you thinking in three dimensions
It’s often said that modern train testing facilities resemble giant model railways. Ben Jones thinks this makes them the perfect inspiration for a layout where you can always keep up to date with the latest developments in rolling stock.
Imagine a place where you can run full-size trains around a giant circuit at speeds of up to 125mph, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Build in a range of curved and inclined tracks, switchbacks and crossings and even multiple track gauges, plus facilities to test, maintain and validate everything from urban trams to high‐speed supertrains and you have the perfect inspiration for a layout that really breaks the mould.
Arguably Europe’s best-known train testing centre is VUZ Velim in the Czech Republic. In May 2018, CAF-built EMU 331001 rushes past the main buildings during validation tests prior to entering service with Northern. Stabled in the background are new trains for Italy and the Netherlands.
NORTHERN TRAINS
Many years ago, Model Rail was the first magazine to build a ‘Total Test Facility’ to put new models through their paces as part of the review process. The ‘TTF’ was an invaluable resource for the magazine, allowing us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of models and share our findings with readers. On a much larger scale, global transport giants such as Siemens Mobility and Alstom use a similar process to test and approve new trains for main line service using specialist test centres scattered across Europe.
Among the first
British vehicles to visit VUZ Velim were 92001/002 in 1994.
Typical of the unusual formations often seen in test trains, the ‘92’ is sandwiched between VUZ test cars and
Czech freight wagons.
R. SHINGLER/ WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Within the next few years, the UK will join that exclusive club with its own purpose-built test centre, now being developed on a brownfield site at Onllwyn, near Swansea. When it is completed in 2025, the £200 million Global Centre for Rail Excellence (GCRE) will give the UK rail industry a place to test everything from trains to safety and control systems, track and civil engineering, IT systems and much more.
GCRE will join well-known sites such as Velim in the Czech Republic, and Siemens’ Wegberg-Wildenrath test centre in western Germany as the focus of testing on all kinds of new rail vehicles and equipment.