Landore depot closes its doors to train maintenance
GREAT Western Railway has ceased to use Landore depot for train maintenance, with the final High Speed Train leaving the Swansea site at 1030 on November 18.
Landore has been replaced by the Hitachi Rail Europe depot at Swansea Maliphant, which is where GWR’s Class 800/802 fleets are maintained. This site opened in 2017 and is the only location west of Cardiff that is electrified.
GWR spokesman Dan Panes told RAIL that the rundown of the site has been ongoing for around three years, and that all staff either transferred to Hitachi, CAF at Newport, other GWR sites, or took voluntary redundancies. He added that there were no industrial relations issues.
The depot had been used to maintain GWR’s High Speed Train fleet, as well as Class 08s used for shunting. However, the introduction of Hitachi’s Intercity Express Train fleet from 2017 made the HSTs redundant. Few now run to Swansea, with all due to be replaced on long-distance trains on the GWR network by mid-March.
When the closure was first confirmed, there were plans to potentially use the site to maintain diesel multiple units used by the Wales & Borders franchise, with Cardiff Canton maintaining electric multiple units. That plan failed to happen, and so the depot has ceased to function as a maintenance facility.
For the time being, it is being used to store redundant HST Mk 3 catering vehicles that have been transferred from Laira in Plymouth ( RAIL 865).
The site celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013. It had been a steam shed, before that was demolished to make way for a new diesel facility that opened in 1963. This was used to maintain the hydraulics introduced by the Western Region, as well as what became Class 37s and ‘47s’ that were also used by the WR.