South West Trains is re-launching a train that was severely damaged in an incident in 2010, following a posh £1.6million rebuild project.
The train operator’s Class 455 train suffered significant damage after a cement mixer lorry fell directly to it from a bridge in Oxshott in November 2010. As a result of incident, the train suffered severe interior and exterior damage to its four carriages and a comprehensive and challenging rebuild was required to be able to bring it back into service. That work has since been finished at Railcare in Wolverton and the train has now been completely repaired.
image[1] align=’right’ border=’0′ style=’padding-left:10px;’ alt=” border=0 >
Structural engineers from Railcare and Atkins discovered early on that the project was more complicated than first thought, having found a serious diagonal twist to 1 of the carriages which they weren’t confident may be removed. The engineering team then checked out the opportunity of using a ‘donor’ vehicle to fix the damaged bodyshell. An old Class 210 vehicle was drafted in and – after assessing its suitability – engineers used it to rebuild the carriage in keeping with the specification of a category 455 train.
Christian Roth, Engineering Director for the South West Trains – Network Rail Alliance said: “The Oxshott accident posed a big problem to us, as suddenly we were a train down. From an engineering perspective though, it offered a virtually unprecedented challenge to rebuild a massively damaged train and safely take it back into passenger service. The expertise of the engineers who worked in this project is second to none and it is a fantastic achievement.
“We at the moment are waiting for the general testing phase before reintroducing it into service.”
Projects and Engineering Director for Railcare, Phil Mitchell said: “The challenges of taking one type of vehicle and making it into another are significant. Not just are you undertaking an important repair but ensuring that every one aspects of the newly built vehicle observe the design and build specification of the category 455. We’re really happy with the result of this complex project and look ahead to supporting the test phase and seeing the train back in passenger service”.
The train will now return to Wimbledon train care depot for traction test, trial running and final certification. It truly is expected to return into passenger service in late spring.