Gold, Silver and Bronze spanners for Electrostar, a 20-year old design still at the top of its game. This is how it got there
SHINING BRIGHT
It was over 20 years ago that the first drawings of what was to become the Electrostar were rolled out over the Porterbrook meeting room desk, the first new EMU since the Networkers and Regional Railways’ Class 323. Alstom’s Juniper was the principal competition, and both companies were putting forward similar proposals: 20-metre vehicles in four-car sets, two 1,300mm-wide doors per vehicle side, six motored axles. Slam door replacement was the objective. The name ‘Juniper’ made it sound like it was a design all ready to go, which it wasn’t, while Adtranz’s ‘Generic Electrical Multiple Unit’ sounded less ready to go, which it also wasn’t. In fact both designs were equally unfrozen. These were the heady days of early privatisation, when Government input was virtually nil, apart from underwriting the franchise payments. Not only were civil servants not interested in the engineering, company directors weren’t either. Happy days.
A STAR RISES IN THE EAST
Traction was to be IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor) drives, new-fangled kit I was all for, although some pr…
