WORKSHIP EQUIPMENT & RAIL DEPOTS
T Investing to improve services
he effective maintenance of rolling stock is
becoming an increasingly important aspect of asset management and service improvement. It is therefore prudent for train operators to maintain as much investment as possible in the maintenance facilities. This is something National Express East Anglia understands.
“The need to renovate the train maintenance depot at Clacton-on-Sea originates from the HLOS (high level output statement) agreement with the Department for Transport,” says John Ratcliffe, engineering director at National Express East Anglia.
“In the early days of HLOS it was identified that East Anglia would need around 180 extra vehicles to cope with the forecast passenger growth over the current regulatory period. We then had to identify how we were going to cater for this additional rolling stock in terms of cleaning and maintenance.
“We began by taking a look at the existing facilities to see if we could meet the demand by working a bit harder and squeezing more performance out of those assets. Fairly quickly we identified we couldn’t do that, because the two main depots at Ilford and Norwich simply wouldn’t be able to cope with that extra volume of vehicles, which actually amounted to an increase of around 15 per cent.
“In the scheme of things this is fairly big increase and so we had to look at alternatives, including building new depots. In particular we focused on West Anglia, because some
Since being closed by a previous operator in the 1990s, the train maintenance depot at Clacton-on- Sea had been largely dormant until National Express East Anglia invested £1.5 million to bring the depot back to life. Rail Technology Magazine spoke to John Ratcliffe to find out more
“Then we looked at Clacton, which had the benefit of being on the NXEA network and whilst it was the right size it again needed extensive refurbishment works, because it had been run down in the mid-90s and had only been used in a piecemeal fashion by contractors ever since. This carried on until about 18 months ago, when the facility was vacated by its last owner and left in a complete state of disrepair.
“Although it required a lot of work, we decided to go and have a look at it. It was obvious it was in a pretty sorry state, although the main shed wasn’t too bad. Having said that, the main accommodation, storage area and facilities in general were completely dilapidated and the roofs had caved in. This meant the weather had got in and there was literally buddleia growing inside the depot buildings.
of the capacity - but not all of it - was coming through this area, operating through the Liverpool Street to Stansted and Cambridge route where we don’t have a maintenance facility.
“This meant one of the options we looked at quite early on was to build a brand new depot to service the new trains, with the older trains being maintained by the two existing depots. This plan proved not to be viable and too expensive, given the cost of a new depot - depending on how big it is and its location - can be
74 | rail technology magazine Dec/Jan 11
anywhere between £15 and £30 million.
“We simply couldn’t justify this expenditure to the Department for Transport, so we began to look at existing facilities. There were a number around the patch. One potential facility was a depot near Cambridge, which was fully operational and had become surplus to requirements. Unfortunately plans to improve access to that particular depot also proved too expensive, so the search continued.
“So at first glance we were a little concerned over the refurbishment costs, but when we looked into it in a bit more detail and had some further surveys done it became evident the cost of bringing it back into operational use was significantly less than it would have been to renovate any of the other depots we had seen.
“In the end it cost us £1.5 million, which is about ten per cent of the cost of a new facility and in our discussions with the Department for Transport it became very clear early on the project offered very good value for money.”
The utilisation of Clacton will be to mainly service trains which have been cascaded under the HLOS agreement.
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