A new 125mph Pendolino train, which will enter service next week, has been formally handed over to Virgin Trains by train builder Alstom.
Leased by Virgin Trains from rolling stock owner Angel Trains, the train will enter service next week.
Virgin Trains’ Chief Operating Officer Chris Gibb accepted the train from Alstom Transport UK Managing Director, Paul Robinson and Malcolm Brown, Angel Trains’ Chief Executive, at Alstom’s Edge Hill Traincare Centre in Liverpool on 12 July.
The new train has undergone extensive testing over the last few months and will now be used to boost capacity of the busy West Coast Main Line, where passenger numbers have doubled to over 28 million in the past six years alone – making it the fastest growing franchise.
Its use on the West Coast Main Line is a result of close co-operation between Virgin Trains and the Department for Transport.
The agreement means that the 439-seat train will run on Virgin Trains’ busiest routes, and enable more capacity to be provided on other routes.
The new train will allow additional seats to be provided on the busy Birmingham-Scotland and London-Glasgow routes, which have seen growth of more than 30% in the last two years.
It will provide 183 more seats than are currently available on the Super Voyagers that serve the Birmingham-Scotland route.
A five-carriage Super Voyager will then be transferred to services between London and North Wales, meaning that some of the busiest trains on the route will now have ten carriages.
Transport Minister Theresa Villiers said:
“Tackling crowding and reducing the cost of our railways are two of the biggest challenges facing the rail industry at the moment. I am delighted that we have reached agreement to bring these carriages into service ahead of schedule.
“But this is just part of the Government’s plans to increase capacity for the West Coast main line – when all the new Pendolino vehicles and trains are in service in December 2012, there will be 106 new carriages in operation on the line.
“Across the rail network we plan to deliver more than around 2,700 new carriages by 2019. These carriages are already beginning to arrive.”
Chris Gibb, Chief Operating Officer of Virgin Trains, said:
“This is exactly what our customers want – more seats and space for their journeys.
“We are delighted to accept this train into our fleet and from next week our passengers will be able benefit from more seats each day on some of our busiest trains.”
Paul Robinson, Managing Director of Alstom Transport UK added:
“Thanks to our teams in the UK and Italy and close cooperation with our customers, we are able to deliver this train for passenger service ahead of the original schedule; a great achievement.”
This train is part of the Pendolino extension programme to deliver four new 11-car Pendolino trains to the current fleet operating on the West Coast Main Line, in order to increase capacity.
It will enter service initially as a nine-carriage set. As well as supplying these new trains, Alstom will lengthen 31 of the 52 existing trains operating on the West Coast Main Line from nine to eleven cars by the end of 2012, providing over 7,000 extra seats in all.
The trains were manufactured at Alstom’s site in Savigliano Italy, its UK Preston site specialised in traction engineering, parts and modernisation, supplying the power modules.
The DfT has ordered four 11-carriage Pendolino trains from Alstom along with an additional 62 new Standard carriages, which will be added to 31 existing nine-carriage trains.
Whilst this news is welcome, it is unfortunate that two carriages have had to be removed from the new train and will undoubtedly have to be stored until 2012 or later. The proverbial grapevine has mentioned a number of different reasons for this decision:
1. Platforms on the WCML cannot accomodate 11 coach trains and have to be lengthened.
2. Virgin on-train staff have not yet been trained to work on 11 coaches.
3. It is purely a DfT franchise ruling that Virgin can only have 9 extra coaches.
Perhaps someone at Virgin or the DfT will care to clarify.
I wonder if the branding on this train (shouting Alsthom 11-Coach Pendolino in place of the Virgin logo on the driving trailers) will remain in place whilst the ‘Redactolino’ is operating as a 9-coach unit – I’m sure this will provide great joy to the folk on board when trains are full and standing for the 4h 10/20m trip EUS-GLC as 50 of us were on one trip. Yes 50 pax standing for over 4 hours.
I saw this train at Stoke-on-Trent on Sunday. I didn’t realise this was a brand new one! I had wondered why there were no ‘Virgin’ titles on it.. Thanks!