Hitachi’s Class 385 makes its inaugural mainline trip
As part of Scotland’s Edinburgh to Glasgow electrification project, the first Hitachi Class 385 train made its inaugural trip between Edinburgh and Linlithgow.
Ian McConnell, ScotRail Alliance’s programmes and transformation director commented “that it has gone so well tells us that we are almost ready to begin the next stage – which is to start fully testing the new trains themselves”.
DCA has worked closely with Hitachi’s teams in Japan and the UK since 2015 to deliver the interior designs for the first and standard class passenger interiors of the Class 385 trains which were recently unveiled at the Newton Aycliffe factory. New stock will include 70 new trains, planned to be split between 46 three-car and 24 four-car trains. Hitachi’s programme manager, Andy Radford, said “we’ve now got trains at our factory in Newton Aycliffe ready to travel to Scotland as soon as they can run on new electric power line”.
Ian continued “when we replace the diesel trains with the brand new, state of the art, electric fleet we will deliver enormous benefits to our customers. Cleaner, greener travel – with more seats, and faster journeys will completely transform travel between our two biggest cities”.
- Link to magazine article in Rail Technology
