Chiltern Railways adapted Mainline Silver train - the engineering story

A particular pleasure of yesterday's 'proving' trip was the chance to talk to the Chiltern and Wabtec engineering teams and learn just what was involved in the adaptions. I am not an engineer but even I could see the skill that has gone into making the project work. The detail below is thanks to Dave Hogwood (pictured), the Chiltern Project Engineer, but, of course, all misunderstandings are my own!

The first thing to note is that the roof of each coach has been raised to allow for the 'sliding plug door' mechanism to be installed. The mechanism used is that created by Siemens for use on the Class 444 DMUs so the expectation is that teething problems will be minimal.

Second adaptation of note is that the door itself has had to be tapered to meet the end bulkheads, hence the distinctive triangular window pictured below.

The third key change is that the opportunity has been taken to strip out all the corroded steel from the bodywork frame. The team from Wabtec reckon that the coaches are now better than new and should have a life expectancy of another 30 years!

All this has been done for a relative 'song' - certainly nothing like the cost of a new-build - and has been achieved quickly. Indeed, Wabtec are due to turn the next adapted set out in 6 weeks (!) with the third promised in early Autumn... This will allow Chiltern to run  three six-carriage sets from the December 2012 timetable.

For those wanting the inside story, Today's Railways, Rail Express, and Railway Gazette International all had correspondents on the train so watch out for the next issues of each one. Rail 697 carries a short news item with photograph (due out on Wednesday), and a feature article is promised for the issue on sale on June 13th.