The Siemens Class 350/2 fleet operating London Midland services on the West Coast between Birmingham, Northampton and Euston recorded no technical failures in last four week period.
This is equivalent to 382,240 miles between technical failures and sets a new UK record for a passenger train fleet.
The 37 Class 350/2 trains were introduced into service from December 2008, 13 months after the contract was signed with the final unit being delivered eight months later.
The fleet has ‘consistently shown strong reliability growth, with continued reductions in delay minutes and cancellations’.
Mike Hodson, managing director of London Midland, said:
“London Midland is delighted with the reliability levels now being achieved by Siemens for our Class 350 trains and it is great that we can have confidence in this fleet as a key component in our drive to improve the overall levels of service reliability and punctuality we deliver to our customers.”
The fleet is intensively used with up to 97% of units in service every day. The Euston services also feature frequent attach and detach operations to match train length to demand and make the most efficient use of the fleet throughout the day.
This level of performance ‘is a result of close working between the operator, London Midland, manufacturer and maintainer, Siemens and owner, Porterbrook Leasing’.
Mick Hill, fleet manager for the London Midland fleet at Siemens, said:
“All involved can be justifiably proud of this exceptional period of reliability that comes on the back of a sustained improvement over the last three years since the trains were introduced. Continued long term reliability growth will come from a joint commitment to working with London Midland to improve operational performance and passenger environment.”
Siemens Class 350/1 and 350/2 trains all now feature special energy meters that monitor and record the energy used and regenerated (through the trains’ regenerative braking system) by each unit. This data can then be downloaded and analysed to help London Midland capture energy savings.
The London Midland Desiro fleet is maintained at Siemens’ purpose-built train care facility in Kings Heath, Northampton.
Over 100 Siemens employees are based at the depot, who in addition to having exceptional rail industry expertise also come from industries such as the armed forces and automotive.
Desiro trains are ‘comfortable and extremely popular with passengers’. The 350/2 trains offer increased seating capacity, efficient air-conditioning, full CCTV coverage and automatic passenger counter devices on each exterior door.
The 350/2 trains offer increased seating capacity, efficient air-conditioning, full CCTV coverage and automatic passenger counter devices on each exterior door and no tables, but that no longer poses a problem as we no longer sell drinks on board either
AJW is being far too kind. 350/2s are a bag of cr@p. 2+3 seating and no tables is a suburban layout for journeys of no more than 30 mins. These trains are wholly unsuitable for the long-distance work they are doing and LM should be ashamed of themselves not giving themselves a pat on the back.