West Midlands Trains to welcome Class 196 and Class 730 next year
two years later than planned, the first of 26 CAF Class 196 DMUS and 81 Alstom Class 730 EMUS will enter traffic with West Midlands Trains in 2022.
As this issue of Railways Illustrated went to press, 17 of the 26 DMUS had been delivered by CAF for testing and training (see panel). There are 12 two-car (196001-196012) and 14 four-car sets in the WMT order (196101-196114).
According to franchise documents published by the Department for Transport, the 196/1s were due to enter traffic from January 5, 2020, with the final sets introduced on June 28, 2020. The 196/0s were due to follow on May 3, 2020, with the final sets entering service on August 23, 2020. WMT has claimed the delays have been caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, affecting the testing and driver training programmes. The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) authorised the 26 DMUS for passenger use as long ago as August 26 last year. As for the Class 730s, this is the fourth Aventra fleet to suffer severe delays. WMT again says that the delay is due to the pandemic. The London Overground Class 710s, Greater Anglia 720s and South Western Railway 701s were all more than a year late entering service due to software issues.
No Class 701 has yet carried passengers, having originally been intended to enter traffic from December 2019. There are 36 three-car 730/0s on order (730001-036), 29 five-car 730/1s (730101-129) and 16 five-car 730/2s (730201-216). The three-car sets are for the Cross-city services and will replace the existing 23 Class 323s, while the 730/1s are for outer suburban services, replacing the Class 350/2 fleet. The 16 Class 730/2s are for long distance services.
It’s expected that the first 730s in traffic will be the three-car sets.
The delay to the introduction of the new fleets has affected planned cascades, with 17 Class 323s due to move to Northern and 22 Class 170s due to move to East Midlands Railway. So far, only a handful of DMUS have transferred from WMT to EMR.