The largest revamp of train bogies belonging to unfire Avanti West Coast’s Pendolino fleet has reached a major milestone.
The first part of the work to overhaul 1,148 bogies – a framework with wheels that sits underneath the train carriage – across Avanti West Coast’s Pendolino fleet has been completed by the UK’s leading train supplier, Alstom.
All 35, 11-carriage Pendolinos have had their sets of 22 bogies examined and reconditioned to give them a new lease of life after clocking up over 750,000 miles – the equivalent distance of travelling to the moon three times.
In just one year, 770 bogies have been revamped by Alstom’s facility in Crewe – a centre of excellence for component repair and overhaul.
Each week the bogies and traction motors (an electric motor that generates the power to rotate the wheels of a train) are transported by road to Crewe, where they are disassembled, and their subcomponents refurbished to like-new condition.
The bogie frames are separated from the wheelsets and washed to remove excess dirt and oil, then stripped into component parts that are reconditioned before being painted and reassembled.
It is part of a wider programme of work on the Pendolinos – known as a heavy overhaul, which each week sees component parts including, pantographs, train control and information systems, batteries, and valves reconditioned or replaced. In one week, Alstom’s teams in Crewe and Manchester will replace 24,456 individual fixings and 9,511 parts, as well as repair 249 items.
The heavy overhaul, which follows the award-winning £117 million investment programme to refurbish the Alstom-built Pendolino trains, is designed to ensure the fleet continues to provide a reliable service.
A team of 35 highly skilled workers employed full-time are dedicated to the project at Crewe – many of them have a family connection.
