Hitachi

Source: Exec Digital UK

Date :10/12/2007 09:51:08

Hitachi Rail is bringing its world famous expertise in high speed trains to the UK. Alistair Dormer, General Manager of Hitachi Rail Systems London, explains

Written by Ruari Mccallion and produced by Paul Radbourne

Best hurry up and grab the opportunity while it’s available: house prices in Kent may currently be offering better value for money now than they will be in a couple of years’ time. When Ashford is just 34 minutes from the centre of London, bringing Dover and Folkestone to less than an hour away, you can be pretty sure that there will be a bit of a rush to take advantage. And what is bringing these towns so much closer to the capital?

The opening of High Speed 1 (the Channel Tunnel Rail Link) and the launch of the new Kent service in December 2009, which will achieve speeds of up to 140 mph, running into St Pancras. Including stops at Ebbsfleet and Stratford, the average speed will be a bit over 120mph and will cut the current 80 minute Ashford-Central London journey time by more than half. Pretty quick – the sort of standard rail users on the Continent and especially in Japan have come to expect.

The speed and service will be provided by six-car units that look a lot like Japan’s ‘Bullet Trains’, which is not surprising: the ‘A Train’s’ official designation is Class 395, and Hitachi’s know-how is extensively used to build Shinkansen trains.

Significant Contract

“We have a contract to design, build, supply and maintain 29 trains for Kent. They’ll operate on and provide a much improved service on the old ‘Classic’ network, serving the south-eastern towns including Ramsgate, Margate, Dover, Folkestone and the Medway towns,” said Alistair Dormer, general manager of Hitachi rail in the UK. “Passenger services are scheduled to begin in December 2009. We already have one train set here, another is on the boat and two more will arrive in January.” Given that there will, therefore, be a mini-fleet of A Trains available by the middle of 2008, why not start upgrading services for the long-suffering Kent commuters?

“We need to complete a huge amount of testing,” Dormer said. “We need approval for running with DC and AC electric power in the South East rail region and on High Speed 1. That’s three different applications, which makes for very complex trains, so testing will be very comprehensive. We have to prove that our electromagnetic footprint won’t interfere with communications, signalling and the rest of the electronic infrastructure.” The rail industry is extremely safety-conscious, which is why any accident is news – they happen rarely but can be catastrophic. Safety is right at the top of the agenda, especially after the misfortunes of Hatfield, Southall and, most recently, Cumbria.

“The test programme will involve running our trains over every inch of the track we will be running on. We will go to every station, to prove selective door opening on short platforms,” he said. “Our system uses GPS to instruct the train which doors to open on short platforms.” The testing will also ensure performance on the high speed line at 140mph.

“The High Speed 1 route is fantastic, of course. The local lines are being steadily upgraded, mainly through night-time working,” said Dormer. “We’ve seen significant improvements since 2002, when we ran our first test train. The quality of the track and, as a result, the ride of the trains, is much, much better.”

An established brand

The Hitachi name is probably better known in the UK for electronics, earth moving machinery and power generation solutions. Hitachi Rail is well-established in other parts of the world – the Bullet Train in its domestic Japanese market being just one example – but it only came to the UK in 1999. The A Train contract, signed in 2005, is its first major rolling stock deal in this country. Getting from zero to a major deal in just six years is quite an achievement.

“There were a number of factors that contributed to us getting the business,” Dormer explained. “We’re the world’s most experienced company in high-speed operations with the Bullet Trains. We’ve never delivered a contract late. We studied the UK’s regulations in great depth and fitted our traction and power systems to an old British Rail train to prove our system works. We demonstrated a number of advanced technologies and gave potential customers the confidence that we know what we’re about. We did all this at our own cost and in advance of contract.”

Recruiting locally

While trains themselves are being built in Japan, Hitachi Rail’s UK operation is a long way beyond a sales presence. Its new Ashford depot, opened at the end of September 2007, took two years to build and will be the centre of its operations and maintenance activities in the immediate future. The long-term contract is to provide the operator with fully-operational trains each morning; everything behind that commitment, except for the drivers, is Hitachi. It plans to have 100 people working at the facility by the end of the year.

“We haven’t had any problem with recruiting the right mix of skills. About one-third of our people have a railway background already; a third we have recruited from the local engineering pool and are training in railway applications; and a third are ex-military. They’re time-served people, highly skilled and very disciplined,” he said. “A lot of our people have gone over to Japan and worked on the production line. That helps them to understand the train they’ll be working on and to get to grips with our working methods, including Lean, fault-finding with statistical process control and, mostly, kaizen.”

While the A Train will debut in 2009, its highest-profile role is likely to be as the Javelin train, which will zip people from St Pancras to Stratford in just seven minutes during the Olympic Games in 2012. By then, the rest of the country may be champing at the bit to get a modern high-speed service.

“The A Train will transform Kent and almost make Ashford a suburb of London in commuting terms.” said Dormer. There are further opportunities. “We have pre-qualified for the Inter-City Express project, which will provide new trains on the Great North Eastern, Great Western and Midland Main lines. All the operators have invested heavily in refurbishing their trains but most of the InterCity 125 HSTs are over 25 years old. They’re at the end of their design life and the tender for the new project is due shortly.” Hitachi Rail is in the process of showing what a 21st-century rail service looks like. For the UK’s passengers, it can’t arrive soon enough.