ROLLING STOCK SPECIAL
Since its launch eight years ago the Pendolino has become one of the most iconic rolling stock designs in Britain, says Alstom’s Tim Bentley.
L
ooking at the Pendolino it is easy to forget that this is a train which be-
gan its life only around 12 years ago, when Alstom was awarded a contract in 1999 to design and build 53 tilting Pendolino trains.
“This was part of Sir Richard Branson’s vi- sion of revolutionising the West Coast Main Line passenger experience,” says Alstom Transport’s WCML customer director, Tim Bentley.
“It came about after an agreement was reached to upgrade the line to accommo- date a tilting train on a conventional rail- way – the clever thing about the train is that you can run it on a conventional line at an enhanced speed.
“While non-tilting trains can reach a speed of 110mph on the line, with a Pendolino and the right signalling system you can run at 125mph. Originally, Pendolino was in- tended to run at 140mph on West Coast but the infrastructure upgrade didn’t quite get there. Whether that changes in the future is debateable but I think with HS2 looking like a reality we have now reached a maxi- mum line speed on West Coast.”
When it first came into service the Pendolino caught the public’s imagination and has continued to do so, Bentley says.
“It is a beautiful piece of technology. It is a
An Alstom-branded Pendolino
Tim Bentley with the operations team at the branding ceremony for Alstom Pendolino
truly iconic design and I am sure that peo- ple will look back and say that it made such an impression. When they are lined up at Euston station for departure, the trains are still a sight to behold with their sleek pro- file. Even though Pendolino has been in service for around eight years, it still looks the part; sexy and modern.
“It makes a great statement for the line and a great statement for Virgin and does exactly what they wanted it to do which was to transform the image of an intercity high speed service. This has been borne out by the fact that passenger numbers from 2004 to the present have effectively doubled on West Coast.”
There are also benefits from an operator’s point of view, he explains: “Firstly, the train itself came as part of a package which is truly innovative in that there is a full service provision contract attached. This meant that Alstom was completely respon- sible for originally taking over some exist- ing rolling stock, which included Mark IIIs, Class 87 electric locomotives and the maintenance depots. The team then took the existing trains out of service and put the new Pendolinos in.
“So for me the Pendolino product is not just about the train, but also how you man- age the maintenance of that train – which I think has been a successful part of what has happened.
“There have been two major develop- ments: there has been the development of the train itself to improve performance; then there have been the innovations as- sociated with maintaining the train, which have been quite dramatic. They have ena- bled Virgin to develop the service from running the fleet of trains for 11 million miles every year to the fleet now running almost 17 million miles – without adding any extra cost and with the same number of maintenance employees on the depots.
“We have developed technology such as Traintracer, which allows us to download fault logs from trains and then to link that through to the planning process at the
26 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 11
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112