14.10.15
Electrification of Allerton Depot shed complete
RTM attended an event to celebrate the electrification and extension of Allerton Depot yesterday (13 October), which supports the North West Electrification Programme and the roll-out of Northern Rail’s fleet of Class 319 electric trains.
The event marked the successful completion of phase 2 of the £23m project to electrify the depot. Phase 2, which took place between December 2014 and September 2015, included extending the train shed to accommodate the longer Class 319s and included the modernisation of the maintenance pit to improve access.
Mark O’Leary, senior programme manager for Network Rail, said that the team has been working all the way through this year to take on the over shed and make it look as it does now. The OLE and the three rows wired in the depot was also undertaken by Network Rail’s maintenance team.
“We effectively dug out the whole of this shed and provided new pits, new rail and facilities and the new depot protection system,” he said, adding that as the facility is an operational depot it was interesting getting access for the principal contractor Buckingham Group to come in and build it.
Alex Hynes, managing director of Northern Rail, said the depot has been re-built behind the scenes with none of the TOC’s customers noticing a difference to service provision or train quality.
“We have delivered a modern, fit-for-purpose facility which is good for our trains, people and we now have enough capacity to park 100 carriages here,” said Hynes. “We are going to have 20 of these fabulous trains [electric 319s] running by the end of the year, 12 of our most crowded services across the whole network are going to get a Northern Electrics service.”
And Cllr Liam Robinson, chair of Merseytravel, said it was certainly the cleanest depot he had ever been in.
But the whole project is the start of the renaissance and revolution of the railways in the north of England, significantly “improving the standards we have on the railways right across the north”.