Anglian Aventras
Greater Anglia confirms building of the first Class 720 EMUs will begin before the end of the year at Derby Litchurch Lane.
CONSTRUCTION of Class 720 electric multiple units for Greater Anglia will begin in December, once the design for the trains has been finalised. The trains will be built by Bombardier at Derby Litchurch Lane.
GA Managing Director Mike Kean said that the trains, which are part of the Aventra family, would then start testing “probably towards Q3 in 2018”.
The first trains are due to enter traffic from February 2019, and will be the five-car variants. The ten-car EMUs are due to enter service from December 2019.
Kean added that GA has been working with Crossrail regarding its Class 345 Aventras, which have provided them with gauging information and route clearance.
GA has 22 ten-car Class 720/1s and 89 five-car Class 720/5s on order. The deal is worth almost £900 million and is being funded by Angel Trains.
The trains will be used on all routes from London Liverpool Street to Hertford East, Kings Lynn, Cambridge, Ipswich, Harwich, Colchester, Clacton, Braintree and Southend. Additionally, one train per hour will run to Norwich.
The trains will feature air- conditioning, high-capacity broadband and plug sockets, passenger information systems that include loading/capacity
indicators, four cycle spaces on both the five-car and ten-car trains, seating in 3+2 formation which GA says will “maximise capacity for more people”, cantilevered seats for maximised floor space and easier cleaning, and walkthrough gangways.
They will be based at Ilford, with stabling and light maintenance carried out at other GA depots including the new Brantham facility that is due to open next year.
The Aventras will enable GA to remove its entire existing EMU fleet from traffic, with the Class 317 and ‘321’ fleets to be sent off-lease by the end of 2019, and the ‘360s’ and ‘379s’ leased until August 2020.
Bombardier’s Alan Fravolini, Project Director, East Anglia Aventra, told RAIL that when production is in full swing, more than two ‘720s’ will be released from Derby per week.
He explained that construction of the 23-metre Crossrail Class 345s and the 20-metre London Overground ‘710s’ and South Western Railway ‘701s’, will run alongside the ‘720’ work. He said that the building and methodology had been fine-tuned since the construction of the S-Stock for London Underground.