As Avanti West Coast prepares to put its new Class 805s into traffic, Richard Clinnick rounds up the various Hitachi fleets in the use in Britain today.
Avanti West Coast is about to become the eighth operator of Hitachi trains in Britain. Ordered in 2019, AWC has 13 five-car Class 805 bi-modes and 10 seven-car Class 807 electric multiple units currently being delivered, with training underway on the Class 805s ahead of their introduction onto the West Coast Main Line.
The 805s will serve Blackpool North, Chester and Holyhead, while the Class 807s have been ordered to operate trains to Birmingham New Street, Wolverhampton and Liverpool Lime Street. The introduction of the bi-mode trains will allow the Class 221 Super Voyagers to be cascaded to CrossCountry and open access operators.
The AWC Class 805s are identical to the five-car Class 80x bi-modes currently in use by Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, London North Eastern Railway (LNER) and TransPennine Express, although unlike GWR and LNER, the interiors were not government-specified. The trains are being manufactured by Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe in County Durham.
Hitachi’s headline fleet was delivered via the Intercity Express Programme (IEP), which was designed to replace High Speed Trains (HST), but these were not the first trains to enter traffic in this country built by the Japanese company; that distinction fell to the Class 395 ‘Javelins’, first unveiled in November 2007. Built in Kasado between 2006 and 2009, the six-car electric multiple units are dual-voltage and operate on High Speed 1 into St Pancras International. Once the trains leave HS1, they switch from 25kV overhead electrification to third-rail 750V DC. The fleet is currently being refurbished by Hitachi at Ashford, where the trains have been based since they were delivered to the UK.
The IEP order, financed by Agility Trains, includes the associated infrastructure and is therefore more than just the trains. The order was placed eight-and-a-half years before the first train carried passengers on October 16, 2017.
The plan was launched in February 2009 with an initial ambition be
