Britain’s bullet train
Hitachi and Bombardier launch their joint bid to design and build HS2’s rolling stock.
The race to select who will design, build and maintain a new £ 2.75 billion fleet of at least 54 high-speed trains for HS2 took an added twist on July 4 when two of the world’s largest train builders confirmed they would team up to submit a single bid.
Hitachi and Bombardier will now enter the competition as a joint venture when the formal tendering process begins later this year, with a contract award expected in March 2020.
The trains will run at speeds of up to 225mph on Phase 1 of the £ 55.7bn HS2 project between London and Birmingham when it opens in 2026, but also serve destinations further afield on existing lines including York, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The announcement follows a similar partnership in Italy, where the companies jointly built 50 ETR 1000 train sets for Trenitalia between 2013-2017, which are known as Red Arrows (Frecciarossa), owing to their top speed of 247mph.
The success of the project demonstrates
There area lot of new things in HS2, and between the two of us, we believe there is a far greater capacity for working with them to deliver the best product possible. Barrie Cottam, HS2 Bid Director, Hitachi Rail
that when working in unison, Bombardier and Hitachi form a tried and tested highspeed team. Meanwhile, both companies are also able to call on their own considerable experience and strong reputations for individually delivering innovative rolling stock solutions in both the UK and international markets.
For Hitachi, this includes Japan’s famous Shinkansen family of bullet trains which was first introduced in 1964, and can run at speeds of up to 198mph.
Hitachi is also responsible for delivering Britain’s only domestic high-speed fleet which it built and introduced ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
Twenty-nine six-car dual-voltage Class 395 Javelins are currently operated by Southeastern at speeds of up to 140mph on HS1 before running onto the conventional network to serve a variety of destinations in Kent, while being maintained by Hitachi at its purpose-built depot in Ashford.
Hitachi’s A-train concept used in Japan formed the basis of the design for the ‘395’, representing the first application of Japanese bullet train technology in the UK.
Hitachi’s UK footprint increased further in 2015 when it commenced train building at an all-new £ 82 million rolling stock assembly plant in Newton Aycliffe.
More than 1,000 people are currently employed at the site to fulfil a sizeable order book, including the Intercity Express Programme trains that will enter service to replace High Speed Train (HST) and Class 91/ Mk 4 sets on both the East Coast and Great Western main lines, and be maintained by Hitachi.
In total, the company will have 281 trains in service and expects to employ more than 2,000 people across 15 sites in the UK by 2020.
Barrie Cottam, Hitachi Rail’s HS2 Bid Director, says: “The most famous project that Hitachi Rail has been involved in is the worldrenowned Shinkansen, while we also acquired Ansaldo Breda in 2015 and their family of Italian high-speed trains. The latest generation of those is the ETR 1000, which we delivered in partnership with Bombardier.
“Closer to home, the Class 395 is still the fastest domestic train in the UK and highly relevant to HS2 as the only classic-compatible high speed train currently in service in this country. It has revolutionised commuting on that part of the Southeastern network by running equally well on HS1 at 140mph as it does on classic commuter routes in deepest Kent at 75mph using the third rail.
“It is also another example of how we’ve brought a lot of people and new processes into the UK rail industry through its cutting-edge design, and our new depot at Ashford which has achieved a reliability of more than 99%. That new way of managing maintenance is now being developed even further for IEP.”
He adds: “When I joined Hitachi four years ago, Newton Aycliffe was just a greenfield site. It now employs more than 1,000 people and produces 30 cars a month, so we’re very proud of how we’ve recruited and developed the workforce and look forward to what it can do in the future.”
Meanwhile, Bombardier’s UK presence is founded on 175 years of continuous rolling stock manufacturing in Derby, where its Litchurch Lane facility has been responsible for designing, developing, manufacturing and testing over 60% of the UK’s existing train fleet.
Almost 2,000 people are based at the plant including 450 specialist engineers, making it a globally recognised centre for vehicle design located at the heart of the largest cluster of rail businesses anywhere in the world.
Litchurch Lane is one of 18 Bombardier sites in the UK, and has delivered some of the country’s largest rolling stock orders ever placed. This includes 1,403 cars for London Underground’s sub-surface line fleet, which form the 192 S-Stock units that are now in service on the Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines.
The facility is now busily fulfilling Bombardier’s multibillion-pound order book, which includes a total of 2,660 cars from
its Aventra platform. These are due to enter service with operators including South Western Railway (750 cars), Greater Anglia (665), West Midlands Trains (333), London Overground (222) and c2c (60), plus London’s Elizabeth Line (630).
Further afield, Bombardier’s international high-speed family of trains is called the Zefiro, which is currently operating in China at speeds of 155-236mph. The company has also extensively collaborated with other manufacturers to help build Germany’s highspeed Intercity Express (ICE) train sets, AVE Class 102 and RENFE Class 130s in Spain and the Acela Express in the USA. It has also provided components for TGV, Duplex, Eurostar and Thalys units in operation throughout Europe.
Bid Director Robert Davies explains: “Until now, Litchurch Lane has predominantly been a conventional main line and metro production site due to the lower speeds of UK operation, and we have other product centres elsewhere in Europe. Our high-speed train product centre has been housed in Germany in terms of knowledge, but Derby has the engineering expertise that could integrate that technology into UK infrastructure.
“We have our range of high-speed trains in operation in China, while across the world we’re primarily known as an enabler for highperformance, high-speed trains by providing key pieces of technology such as bogie and power systems - particularly in Europe.”
So why have the two companies decided to join forces for HS2? Both Bombardier and Hitachi had already been shortlisted for the HS2 contract with individual bids, but Davies feels there were clear strengths in combining the bids to complement each other’s technical abilities.
He also believes that adopting the partnership approach will help amplify the bid’s support for HS2’s strategic goals to boost economic development, create employment and to leave a lasting skills legacy in the UK.
“We entered the process and pre-qualified separately, but competition law meant we couldn’t engage much until recently. There was a high-level commercial discussion and then due diligence, and for us it meant asking if the result of a joint venture would be greater than the sum of its parts. The answer was a definite ‘yes’, because each of us brings different strengths.
“We want to be seen as the best in class, and this partnership means the overall train design should be even better. Hitachi implementing Javelins on all-new highspeed track on HS1 is similar to what we’re currently doing with the Aventras in the newly constructed Crossrail tunnels [due to open in December], and you won’t find that type of pedigree with other competitors. That makes another compelling reason for us to come together.
“It also means that at a stroke we effectively double the effect we could have on the UK economy, and by doubling our footprint we could start a long way ahead of our competitors.
“We can already point to four years in Newton Aycliffe and 175 years in Derby in terms of our economic contribution, and the security it would bring to our established supply chains, in addition to that great product combination.”
Cottam agrees that it made good sense to
It meant asking if the result of a joint venture would be greater than the sumo fits parts. The answer was a definite ‘yes’. Robert Davies, Bid Director - High Speed Trains, Bombardier
form a joint venture in order to - potentially - create a combined workforce on this project of almost 5,000 people in the UK to manufacture rail vehicles. If successful, he feels the bid would also mean substantially lower risk to the delivery of the contract by securing twice the amount of expertise, in addition to providing more added value to the UK economy as a whole.
He adds: “The high-speed specification for HS2 is, not surprisingly, very demanding. And it becomes more challenging when you add in aspirations for environmental protection, industry design standards, passenger experience standards and utilisation. We’ve effectively doubled our capacity to meet the demanding timetable for the design and development phase.
“We also have established production techniques that safeguard the process, and that means we’d have much lower risk to the fulfilment of those orders than if we did things on our own, or if it was a different company acting alone. There are a lot of new things in HS2, and between the two of us, we believe there is a far greater capacity for working with them to deliver the best product possible, while enjoying unrivalled reliability.
“The size of our UK footprints also means that any investment in HS2 trains is spread over a wider area and therefore the benefits will be much greater in terms of skills development, training and the recruitment of graduates and apprentices.”
Teams from Bombardier and Hitachi have already met to discuss how to capitalise on the experiences of joint-working in Italy, and ways to most effectively work together as part of the HS2 bid.
The companies will share HS2 bidding information, but strict competition law means that they will remain competitors in other markets.
“HS2 will be a joint effort and not one leading the other,” says Davies. “It will be an integrated team formed of staff from both companies putting together the design and manufacturing package.
“We have to comply with a tight legal framework. Anyone involved in this bid is effectively behind a firewall, and all information and tools must have no connection with our other day-to-day activities. For example, if I receive a technical drawing on my computer, it cannot be accessible to anyone outside my team – everything stays behind that firewall.”
Cottam adds: “We’ve bid together before and will put that experience to good use. We remain competitors on every other project, but collaboration between companies is becoming more of a fact in our industry worldwide. We have experience of working in this way together, so it’s relatively easy for us to work as part of a joint venture.
“HS2 has been very clear that it wants a train that is a credit to Britain and embodies the best of its culture, and together we are determined to do just that.”