AT200s leave Japan

Five Hitachi Class 385 bodyshells are due to arrive in the UK in June, while testing continues in Japan.

FIVE Class 385 bodyshells are due to arrive in the UK this month, while in Japan the first completed ‘385’ is undergoing testing.

Hitachi Rail Europe (HRE) is building 70 electric multiple units for ScotRail that will enter traffic next year. The next six are being built in Kasado (Japan), and the remaining 63 will be assembled in HRE’s Newton Aycliffe facility near Darlington.

The five bodyshells on their way to the UK are first production trains, and will be used to form three-car trains (a sixth bodyshell will follow). They were shipped from Kobe.

Meanwhile at Kasado the first four-car ‘385’ is undergoing testing before being shipped to the UK later in the year. HRE is building a further three four-car trains and two three-car trains in Japan, and these will be undergoing testing soon before moving to the UK.

All HRE-built trains - and bodyshells bound for Newton Aycliffe - will be shipped to Teesport for onward road movement. This is the same method as for the Class 800/801 Intercity Express Programme trains.

The first ‘385’ is due to move to Scotland this November, for testing in a Signal Protection Zone on the national network. GB Railfreight is contracted to carry out the main line testing, as it has done on the IEP trains.

All 70 trains will have been delivered to ScotRail by December 2018 ( RAIL 795), although not all will be in traffic.

They were ordered in a £370 million deal, and will be used on a number of newly electrified routes north of the border, beginning with Edinburgh Waverley-Glasgow Queen Street via Falkirk High from autumn 2017. In early to mid-2018 they will be introduced onto the Glasgow Queen StreetCumbernauld-Falkirk Grahamston route, before replacing Class 380s on the North Berwick line in spring 2018.

In late 2018 they will run from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Dunblane, Stirling and Alloa. At the same time, they will be introduced onto the Cathcart Circle, Newton and Neilston lines in Strathclyde.

The ‘385s’ are part of the AT200 design developed by Hitachi Rail Europe, and are the first orders from that ‘family’.