A charity railtour has visited three of Alstom’s Traincare Centres.

The Branch Line Society organised the charter, which visited the Alstom sites in Manchester (Longsight), Wolverhampton (Oxley) and Liverpool (Edge Hill) on Saturday 4 April.

The visits were part of a tour along on the West Coast Main Line, which began and ended in Merseyside.

The tour was dubbed ‘Alstom’s Depot Dash’, and enabled passengers to see and film railway maintenance facilities that they would not usually get to see.

Alstom’s five Traincare Centres along the West Coast Main Line service fleets including Avanti West Coast’s Pendolino trains, which Alstom also built. The Pendolinos completed an upgrade two years ago, which returned the trains to an ‘as new’ condition.

The railtour set off from Edge Hill railway station and was hauled by GB Railfreight (GBRf) locomotive No. 66701 to Liverpool Lime Street. Locomotive no. 57306 then took the tour to Alstom’s Manchester Traincare Centre, and No. 66694 hauled the train from Bescot Yard to Bletchley railway station.

Around three hundred passengers travelled in Mark 3 carriages, which were provided by Eastern Rail Services.

The tour carried the headcode 1Z57, and Alstom’s Central Operations team welcomed it to each site. Resident shunting locomotives at Longsight (No. 08887 and No. 09007) and Oxley (No. 08617) hauled the charter’s eight coaches.

The charter raised more than £4,200, with over £3,200 donated to Beatson Cancer Charity, and over £1,200 shared among Railway 200 charity partners.

Other Alstom Traincare Centres have also hosted charity tours, including Polmadie Depot in Glasgow, which last year welcomed visitors for the first time in 25 years.

“Opening our Traincare Centres to a passenger service is something we do very rarely, so Alstom’s Depot Dash was genuinely special. These sites are first and foremost operational environments, and the professionalism of our teams ensured the tour could be delivered safely while giving passengers a unique perspective on the work that keeps Britain’s railway moving.”

Christopher Mackenzie, Head of Passenger Operations at Alstom