£500m of new trains spent by Northern Rail will reach into Blackpool North early 2019. A great step forward bringing state of the art diesel train sets onto the Fylde coast.
98 of these trains will feature free Wifi, power for your devices, air conditioning and a reservation system.
These trains, built by CAF in Spain will go through their first round of dynamic testing to Blackpool North on January 2nd 19′.
Its journey from Edge Hill Depot will leave at 09:59 and make it's way to Liverpool Lime Street for 10:09. Leaving platform 8 at 10:13 the train will use the route via Bootle Branch Junction arriving for a short stop at Preston on Platform 1 for 10:54 departure.
From Preston joining the Blackpool branch line at the Preston Fylde Junction, will pass all the stations on the line during the test before arriving at platform 6 at 11:15.
The journey does not stop here as for 11:23 the set will be taken into Blackpool North's Carriage sidings as it would if from the end of a service.
Do you know where these units will run to? Is it true they will form the reinstated Leeds / York Service in 2019? Share your thoughts and comment below.
Before these units were tested on the UK network CAF did similar a practice on the Czech rail network.
This testing will continue from January as Northern gets ready to launch the first new train into service by the end of the year.
Test run timings can be found below:
What did the officials say?
Ben Ackroyd, Northern's Engineering Director, said:
“Passengers in the North West will get a chance to see the trains as they are being tested.
There's a real sense of anticipation among the team here at Northern as we look forward to introducing a step change in what we offer our customers.”
Richard Garner, CAF's UK Director, commented:
“We continue to enjoy an excellent collaborative working relationship with Northern and the UK track testing of vehicles is yet another important milestone.
“We are a step closer to seeing our vehicles operating on Northern's important and busy rail network, when we are confident our reliable, high-performance trains will deliver the best possible customer experience.”
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yes i will be going down to view this
Talks about new diesel trains, then shows footage of an electric unit – am I missing something?
How can the provision of new Diesel trains on the newly electrified Blackpool Line be good news? Or am I missing something?
yes i agree with you this strange
Sounds good. About time that the Class 195 and Class 331 will soon be coming to Blackpool North. With Class 195 to operate to/from Blackpool South.
Please see my video of a 195 passing through Wigan on my YouTube channel.