Enhanced maintenance carried out on Class 175s
TRANSPORT FOR Wales took the majority of its Class 175 DMU fleet out of service in early March for enhanced maintenance following a series of three engine bay fires – which TFW described as ‘thermal events’ – involving the trains. 175008 was stopped at Wrexham after an engine bay fire on February 8, and 14 days later 175101 also suffered fire damage at Wilmslow.
The most recent incident happened on March 1, involving 175007, although the fire was quickly extinguished and the DMU was able to return to depot under its own power. It is understood that the issue has been identified as being due to a build-up of debris, leaves and other contaminants in and around the engine bays.
As a result, a programme of deep cleaning of the bays to remove any accumulated debris has been enhanced, and only trains that have undergone this work will be released into traffic.
In a video message released on Tfw’s Twitter feed on March 2, chief operating officer Jan Chaudhry-van der Velde said: “Safety is our number one priority for both our customers and colleagues.
“We’ve had to take some of our Class 175 trains out of service while we run some enhanced maintenance routines on them for safety reasons. “This is going to leave us a little short of rolling stock for a few days while we put all the trains through this is enhanced maintenance. As the trains go through the programme, they’ll return to passenger service, so the rolling stock situation will gradually get better over the next few days.” TFW currently operates all 27 Class 175 DMUS, with the fleet made up of 11 two-coach Class 175/0s and 16 three-coach Class 175/1s. The trains are due to be returned to leasing company Angel Trains over the coming months, with the new fleet of Caf-built Class 197s set to eventually replace them.