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Siemens Mobility Writes Next Chapter - Desiro UK |
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Written by Vector1Media
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PR - Siemens
Mobility has handed over the first of 37 electric regional trains from
the Desiro UK family to Porterbrook Leasing Company Ltd. The roll-out
was celebrated jointly by the customer, the operator and the
manufacturer in Wegberg-Wildenrath, Germany, where Siemens operates a
test center for rail vehicles of all kinds. There also the new train
completed successfully its test trips.
Ordered
by Porterbrook, a leasing company, the 37 new regional trains from the
Desiro UK family are Class 350/2 vehicles and are to run on the West
Coast Main Line between London and Birmingham. They are being
manufactured in the Siemens factory in Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany, and
achieve a maximum speed of 100 mph. The leasing company Porterbrook,
which is the purchaser of the vehicles, will lease the four-unit trains
to London Midland, the operator which holds the concession for the
line. The first ten trains will commence passenger services on December
12. Once the entire Porterbrook fleet has been delivered in June 2009,
there will be a total of 316 Desiros on the rails in Great Britain.
"The
West Coast Main Line between London and Birmingham is a strategically
very important route for our customers", said Jörn F. Sens, CEO of the
Rolling Stock Business Unit of Siemens Mobility during his formal
speech on the handover of the first train to the customer. "We are
proud that we are able to supply yet another fleet to a customer in
order to continue the success story of our Desiro UK, which has been
operating very reliably in Great Britain for a period of five years
now."
Steve Banaghan, Managing Director of London Midland, said:
“We are looking forward to taking delivery of these new trains. They
will transform the experience of passengers on our longer distance
routes and combined with our new direct services between the London,
Birmingham and the North West will provide new opportunities to travel
with London Midland.”
The Desiro family in Great Britain
This
success story of the British version of the train began in 2003, when
First Great Eastern (today: National Express East Anglia) put the first
vehicles into service between London and East Anglia. This is why
Siemens was able to celebrate the fifth birthday of the Desiro UK at
the same time as the roll-out of the new fleet. Today, Desiros of the
classes 185, 350, 360/1, 360/2, 444 und 450 are operating all over the
entire island, in Weymouth on the south coast as well as in Glasgow in
Scotland.
The order from Porterbrook was received in fiscal
year 2007 and, including maintenance, is worth around 240 million euros
(approximately 190 million pounds sterling). Recently, the Scottish
transport office and the railway operator First ScotRail ordered 38
trains, which are to connect the cities of Ayr and Glasgow from the end
of 2010 onwards. Other Desiro UK operators are South West Trains,
Heathrow Express and First TransPennine Express.
The Desiro UK
has already been the recipient of several awards, including the Golden
Spanner Award from Modern Railways Magazine, which it has received
three times for reliability, and the Rail Business Award of the
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC). The British
Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) also named the Class
185 and Class 360/2 Desiro UK as the most reliable trains that are
currently running on the railways in the country.
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