Old Oak closes
Old Oak Common depot closes, ahead of its demolition to make way for a new High Speed 2 station.
Old Oak Common depot closed on December 8, with the final High Speed Train departing at 1642 (three minutes early) after being serviced.
Great Western Railway arranged for 43185 Great Western (which carries Intercity livery) and 43093 Old Oak Common HST Depot 1976-2018 (which carries a livery depicting the history of the West London depot) to power the HST, which formed the 1645 empty stock to London Paddington.
Staff have transferred to different sites, while maintenance of the Night Riviera Sleeper has transferred to Long Rock at Penzance, with servicing also carried out at Reading.
GWR’s High Speed Train fleet was the last to be maintained at the depot, although that has been vastly reduced over the past year following the introduction of the Intercity Express Train Class 800/802s.
The depot has been run down over a number of months, ahead of its demolition to make way for a High Speed 2 station that is due to open in seven years’ time.
Once the site has been cleared in the coming days, work will begin on the new station.
Once the largest depot on the Great Western network when it opened in 1906, Old Oak Common was rebuilt in the 1960s following the decision to make it a diesel-only facility ahead of the final withdrawal of steam locomotives. That led to the demolition of the majority of the original depot, apart from a repair shed known as ‘The Factory’.
The new facility opened in 1965, and was joined in the late 1970s by a depot specifically for the High Speed Train fleet then being introduced. That depot was the last facility standing.
English, Welsh & Scottish Railways took over the original site (including The Factory) at privatisation, but gradually reduced its use. In 2009 the site was vacated by DB Schenker (which had replaced EWS) and a compulsory order was made by the Crossrail Project.
Since then a depot operated by Bombardier has been built on that land. This is being used to store more than 30 Class 345s that cannot yet be used on the delayed cross-London project.
Old Oak Common is the second GWR depot to close in recent weeks following Landore in Swansea ( RAIL 867).
IET maintenance is carried out at Hitachi’s nearby North Pole depot (London), Stoke Gifford (Bristol) and Maliphant (Swansea), with other work carried out at Laira and Long Rock. HSTs are maintained at Laira and St Philip’s Marsh.