THREE MORE CASTLE 2+4 HSTs ALSO ON THE WAY
THE FIRST of 19 Class 769s has been delivered to Great Western Railway, as the operator confirmed plans to enhance services on the North Downs line from September, meeting a long-held aspiration to introduce a third train each hour between Reading and Redhill.
The operator says it has identified services used by a high number of school students where extra capacity is required. The third service will operate on Saturdays and in some off-peak weekday hours between Reading and Redhill. GWR aspires to introduce further off-peak weekday services as well as to extend these to Gatwick Airport and introduce additional peak services, although operation of more services to Gatwick cannot take place until platform works at the station are completed (rebuilding work at platform level began in May and is due to be completed in 2022, with the full station improvement to be completed the following year).
The first Class 769 was delivered to GWR on 7 August, with plans for the first unit to enter passenger service this winter. GWR has ordered 19x4-car sets from Porterbrook, converted from Class 319 EMUs at Brush Traction in Loughborough, and the GWR types will be able to operate under overhead electric, third rail and diesel power. They will be deployed on various services in the Thames Valley including the North Downs line, enabling a cascade of further Class 165 Turbo DMUs to the West of England.
THREE MORE CASTLES
GWR is also to procure three more 2+4 HSTs, dubbed by the operator as ‘Castles’ and designated Class 255, taking the total number to 14. The eleventh GWR set to have been converted at Wabtec, including the fitting of power doors, was delivered to the operator in April. Once it has its full allocation of 14 sets, GWR will look to diagram 12 of them for service each day; whilst current duties cover trains on the Cardiff – Bristol – Penzance route, the company is still evaluating how the additional sets will be used.
GWR has acquired 15 additional Mk 3 vehicles and seven Class 43 power cars from Angel Trains, and three additional coaches, owned by First Rail Holdings, which will be fully refurbished and made available as spares. In addition, GWR has purchased outright five Mk 3 vehicles from Porterbrook which will be used purely for the provision of spare parts for its Class 255 fleet. These latest acquisitions take GWR’s HST fleet to 63 Mk 3 passenger vehicles and 35 power cars. In an unexplained decision, whilst the original sets are designated GWR01 – GWR11, the three new sets are to be GWR14, GWR15 and GWR16. The complexity of this arrangement sees the operator using vehicles owned by the franchise and the parent company as well as those leased in the conventional way.
