Vivarail has announced that one of their brand new trains have arrived at the Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway ahead of passenger trains.
The Class 230 train will be running passenger trains on the 10th October 2018 at 11 am and will be staying at the Scottish Museum for just under two weeks.
The rides at the heritage railway will be FREE and all are welcome to attend.
This unit, 230002, joins 230003 (currently at Bletchley TMD) in the Class 230 fleet. The trains will be seen on the Marston Vale line as well on the Wales and Borders under Transport for Wales.
The free public passenger trains will run on 11 am and 3 pm on Wednesday 10th October, at 4 pm on Thursday 11th October and 11 am on Friday 12th October 2018.
There is no need to book a seat, just turn up and enjoy a ride on this new train.
Seats are available on first come first served basis and are subject to operational requirements.
What did the officials say?
Adrian Shooter, CEO of Vivarail, said:
“I am delighted to bring this train to Scotland, I have long admired the stance and political will of the Scottish Government to reduce emissions in towns and cities. I am also very proud that Vivarail, the UK's smallest and newest train manufacturer, is the first to bring an operational battery train into passenger service. It shows our level of commitment to delivering exactly what our customers want. Of course whilst we are carrying the public in Bo'ness for these services we are also busy back at our base building new trains for the West Midlands and Wales, as well as starting work on our next proof of concept train – a battery/hydrogen hybrid.”
Bill Reeve, Director of Rail, Transport Scotland, said:
“The Scottish Government's Programme for Government 2017-18 included a commitment to trial hybrid self-powered trains and Transport Scotland has been monitoring technological developments in this field, liaising with Abellio ScotRail, rail vehicle owners and manufacturers. The rail industry in several areas are working on various approaches to low carbon rail transport and Vivarail now have a demonstrator battery powered train available and the opportunity has arisen to have the train carry out demonstrator runs in Scotland during October. Transport Scotland welcomes this opportunity to support Vivarail in demonstrating this particular use of zero emission technology on heavy rail.”
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A good start to test the BMU Vivarail converted Class 230. As the DEMU Class 230 that will be operated by West Midlands Trains will start service on the Bletchley-Bedford Line in December.
Could WM Trains inherit few more Class 230’s so that these can work alongside the Class 172 cascaded from London Overground to operate on Coventry-Nuneaton and Coventry-Leamington Spa lines and to cascade the Class 153, Class 156 & Class 150 DMU Sprinters currently operated on those lines to operate them elsewhere in the West Midlands that could do with extra trains such as Birmingham/Wolverhampton-Telford Central and Shrewsbury services. Or possibly cascade those units to either GWR, Transport for Wales or Northern.