Crash Damaged Eurostar
In 2001 a Eurostar was involved in a collision with a Belgian Railways locomotive in a depot accident, leaving the Eurostar unit with significant damage to the R8 and R9 vehicles.
Railcare at Springburn were awarded the contract to repair these vehicles due to their recognised expertise in this field, even although it meant transporting the damaged vehicles all the way from Belgium to Scotland by road!
CORREL Rail was appointed by Railcare as the VAB following a commercial tender process, which was won as much on cost and service as the fact that we had staff involved in the original design and build of the UK Eurostar sets.
Whilst the majority of the vehicles (R8 and R9) were repairable back to original design, and therefore didn’t require certification, there were areas of the structure where this approach could not be taken. Due to both unavailability of certain components and the specific manner and sequence in which these lightweight steel bodies were assembled and welded when first manufactured, which was not duplicatable for a repair, a large focus of the CCB staff was on the structural aspects of the repair.
Following a rigorous and careful examination by Railcare experts and original design experts from ALSTOM Aytre in France, a repair procedure that would return the vehicle to a compliant state was developed and approval from CORREL Rail conferred by our experts in the Design CCB.
To satisfy ourselves that the procedure had been implemented CORREL Rail agreed with Railcare points where we would physically inspect the repair, using our experienced Construction CCB signatories and where, through audit and assessment approval CORREL Rail would use Railcare staff inspection and documentation.
The climax to this successful project was the re-introduction of the repaired vehicles into the unit at North Pole depot and the re-registering of the whole unit on behalf of Eurostar by CORREL Rail.
Published: 23/08/2008