THE FASTCHARGE Class 230 battery train, developed from former London Underground D78 Stock, has begun testing, in advance of it entering service for Great Western Railway on the Greenford Branch between West Ealing and Greenford.
The first half of February saw 230001 Viva Venturer undertake a series of test runs from Long Marston. The unit’s first venture onto Network Rail infrastructure came on February 5 when it worked 5Q11, the 10.24 Long Marston to Moreton-in-Marsh via Evesham, and 5Q12, the 11.49 Moreton-in-Marsh to Honeybourne North Junction, before the set returned to Long Marston. It then reappeared two days later and continued to work locally into the following week.
On February 14, GWR said the unit travelled 86 miles on battery power without recharging, exceeding the 84 miles previously recorded by a Stadler Class 777 under test conditions in 2022, which is understood to have been the greatest distance travelled by a battery train designed for the UK.
On February 16, 230001 successfully ran under its own power to GWR’s Reading depot as 5Q23, the 10.25 departure from Long Marston via Oxford. The 70-mile journey used 45% of the unit’s battery capacity, with GWR engineers believing that the train could have travelled more than 120 miles on a single charge.
GWR’s FastCharge technology has been designed to solve the problem of delivering reliable, battery-only trains capable of fulfilling timetable services on branch lines, eliminating the use of diesel traction and helping to meet the Government’s and the wider rail industry’s target to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The use of batteries for extended operation has typically been constrained by their range, meaning widespread implementation has not been possible. The FastCharge technolo
