8
NEWS
Rail Engineer • March 2016
Inside an AT200 From Autumn 2017, passengers between Edinburgh and Glasgow will be able to travel on ScotRail’s class 385 trains, which are Hitachi AT200 series EMUs. These have a maximum speed of 160 km/h and 23-metre cars. The public has been able to experience what it will be like to travel in one of these new trains following the unveiling of a full-size model at Edinburgh Waverley station. ScotRail’s new EMUs are Hitachi’s first AT200s. Abellio signed a contract for 70 of them in March 2015, a month before they took over the ScotRail franchise, although they started procurement discussions with Hitachi in August 2013. The £370 million order is for 46 three-car units and 24 four-car units and includes a 10-year contract for maintenance at Craigentinny, which will also service the IEP trains. The order is being financed by SMBC Leasing’s Caledonian Rail Leasing specialpurpose vehicle and gives the Scottish Government the option to buy back the full fleet for £1 after 25 years.
Bodyshell fabrication at Hitachi’s Kasado works in Japan started last October with the first being rolled out at end of January. Seven trains will be built in Japan after which the remaining 63 will be built at Hitachi’s UK facility in Newton Aycliffe, which opened in September. Scotland will receive its first class 385 in October for nighttime testing with no other trains running. Further units for testing will be delivered in November and December. Approval for normal network running is programmed for May 2017 to allow driver training to start, ready for the first service train in the autumn of 2017. By December 2017, all 24 fourcar units will have been delivered. This will enable the timetable to be accelerated as all Edinburgh to Glasgow services will be formed
of class 385 units which will offer faster journey times with more seats. Currently this service uses three-car class 170 DMUs which have 18 first class and 171 standard class seats. These will be replaced by four-car Class 385s which will have 20 first class and 253 standard class seats, 16 of which are tip-up. Other passenger improvements include more bay seating (four
seats around a table), better alignment of seats with windows, power sockets in standard class, free Wi-Fi and a flexible multi-use area for prams and bikes. A novel innovation is a passenger counting system to record people leaving and entering the train. This will be linked to platform screens and the ScotRail app to let passengers waiting on platforms know where there is more space to board.