19.10.17
Major milestone as first Class 385 makes Edinburgh-Linlithgow trip
The first of the new Class 385 electric trains, which still has interiors to be fitted, made its inaugural mainline trip between Edinburgh and Linlithgow last night.
This journey represents a major step forward for Scotland’s Edinburgh-Glasgow electrification project, which forms a key part of the wider Edinburgh-Glasgow Improvement Programme (EGIP) expected to create a 30% boost in capacity by 2019.
“Yesterday’s trial was a hugely important step towards completing the electrification of the line between Edinburgh and Glasgow,” commented Ian McConnell, ScotRail Alliance’s programmes and transformation director, who spoke to RTM about the trains earlier this year. “Having a train run on the route is one of the final phases of the electrification process.
“That it has gone so well tells us that we are almost ready to begin the next stage – which is to start fully testing the new trains themselves. We are building the best railway that Scotland has ever had.
“When we replace the diesel trains with the brand new, state of the art, electric fleet we will deliver enormous benefits to our customers. Cleaner, greener travel – with more seats and faster journeys will completely transform travel between our two biggest cities.”
Speaking to RTM exclusively earlier this month, Alex Hynes, managing director of ScotRail Alliance, said the Class 385 fleet will, alongside the refurbished HSTs, mean 90% of the operator’s fleet will be either new or revamped by 2020. The other 10% is already too modern to require any work.
While Hynes did acknowledge that the alliance was aiming to roll out the trains onto the network by December, he said no promises can be made until the fleet is fully tested on the newly electrified stretch between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
“I don’t want to rush the trains into service because our customer satisfaction is very high,” he told us. “Our punctuality is very high, particularly on that route – I commute on that route and you can set your watch by the train, it’s a fantastic service. The last thing my customers want is for me to rush in a new fleet of trains and for them not to work.
“I’m looking at this from a ‘customer’ end of the telescope rather than a ‘new train introduction’ end of the telescope, and so we’re probably going to introduce them in a more gradual way than perhaps we were planning to do so in the past.
“We have trains on test in Scotland and they’re performing as we expect, but they’re on other electrified routes, not Edinburgh—Glasgow. So between now and the end of the year, we’ll be testing them, building them, doing their fault-free miles, and we’ll introduce them as soon as it’s sensible to do so.”
RTM’s full interview with Hynes will appear in the November/December edition, which you can receive for free by subscribing here.
Today’s milestone announcement will be welcomed by bosses following last year’s concerns from the ORR about meeting EGIP targets.
This month, Hitachi Rail Europe unveiled the new Class 385s at the Newton Aycliffe factory. New stock will include 70 new trains, fully completed with interiors, planned to be split between 46 three-car and 24 four-car trains.
Hitachi’s programme manager, Andy Radford, said: “It’s positive to see that progress is being made on Edinburgh to Glasgow electrification.
“We’re hopeful that we’ll be given permission to start full testing soon so we can guarantee the trains can run for passengers safely. We’ve now got trains at our factory in Newton Aycliffe ready to travel to Scotland as soon as they can run on new electric power line.”
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