Great Western Railway’s brand new Intercity Express Train carried passengers for the first time recently, marking the start of the biggest fleet upgrade on the Great Western route in almost 40 years.
A Hitachi Rail Europe spokesman said: “Having already completed 5,000 miles of fault-free running, the first British-built Hitachi train from Paddington to Bristol departed on time at 07.00. It arrived at its destination smoothly and promptly, offering passengers more seats, space and fast wifi. More new trains will follow until the full fleet of 57 are in service next year.”
“The Bristol to London service experienced a few technical challenges, for which we apologise to passengers for any inconvenience caused. We are of course disappointed with an issue with this train’s air conditioning and water ingress in one of the carriages. We are investigating this as a matter of priority and will restore the train back into passenger service once fully rectified.”
Karen Boswell, Managing Director, Hitachi Rail Europe, who was on-board the first service, said: “We, at Hitachi Rail, are really proud to have built trains in the UK, designed using Japanese bullet train technology, that are improving passengers’ journeys on the Great Western route.
“Nine years of hard work has gone into making this vital fleet upgrade happen, including creating a brand new factory, workforce, and establishing modern maintenance facilities from Swansea to London. We’ve delivered pioneering 21st century trains for passengers to enjoy and sparked a manufacturing renaissance in the North East.”
Hitachi is building 57 Intercity Express trains (IET) for Great Western Railways at their UK train factory. The first seven trains were supplied with a phased introduction of the rest until the end of 2018.
Hitachi also has orders for the same trains from Virgin Trains East Coast (65 starting end of 2018), Transpennine Express (19 starting 2019) and Hull Trains (5 starting 2019)
The new trains that entered service today were all built at Hitachi’s £82m factory in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham. Newton Aycliffe employs over 1,000 people and is purpose-built train manufacturing facility opened in September 2015 in the area where Britain’s first steam trains were built.
Hitachi will now maintain the new trains for GWR for 27.5 years as part of the Intercity Express Programme contract. To do this they have invested £160m in building modern maintenance facilities along the length of the Great Western railway, including Swansea, Bristol and West London which will employ 500 people.
