Virgin’s Tilting Train
Over the last 5 years CORREL Rail Limited has been responsible for the conformance certification of design, construction and maintenance plan and the engineering acceptance of the new Virgin Class 390 trains. Referred to as the ‘Pendolino Britanica’, a reference to their pedigree as a derivative of the successful FIAT Ferroviaria Pendolino trains, this contract has presented many new and novel design features for the acceptance process to manage. A whole new set of high speed Railway Group Standards were written to cover these new and novel areas against which CORREL Rail, as CCB and VAB, were the first to carry out scrutiny.
The fleet consists of 53 off 9 car 140mph units with a 2 + 1 and 2 + 2 mainly unidirectional seating arrangement. The trains as designed are 9 car units but the first batch has been delivered as 8 car units pending the delivery and retrofit of the TSO.
Specific challenges have included the scrutiny and approval of the novel tilting system, which is bogie mounted, the train control software, particularly the Tilt Authorisation Speed Supervision system (TASS) and the kinematic envelope validation under gauging for the purposes of route clearance.
To gain confidence in the manufacture and design processes behind these new trains CORREL Rail has carried out extensive auditing and assessment overseas, as well as in the UK, which has re-enforced our more normal range of construction inspections and audits on the manufacturing flow line.
Considerable testing of the new train and its novel features were witnessed by our scrutiny staff at ALSTOM’s private test track at Asfordby, prior to certifying test operation on Network Rail infrastructure at a series of agreed testsites, both under possession, and later in traffic.
Published: 22/08/2008