The UK government’s High Speed 2 rail project has awarded a £2.8bn contract to build 54 trains to two manufacturing companies — Alstom of France and Hitachi of Japan.
The initial stages of vehicle body assembly and fit-out will be done at Hitachi’s plant in Newton Aycliffe in Durham while the second stage of fit-out and testing will be done at the Alstom factory in Derby.
The first trains for the new line will be produced from 2027 and they would start carrying passengers at some point between 2029 and 2033, the government said.
Hitachi won the contract despite the high-profile failure of its Class 800 trains earlier this year, which caused travel chaos on some of the UK’s busiest lines. Those trains, which run on conventional rather than high-speed tracks, were pulled from service for days as a precaution after engineers found cracks on parts of their chassis.
The decision is also set to be the subject of a High Court challenge by Siemens, the German manufacturer. Siemens has accused the government of running a flawed competition process.
“We’re obviously very disappointed by the announcement, as we believe we submitted a strong bid to build Britain’s new HS2 trains,” Siemens said.
HS2 has separately had to make an out-of-court settlement to Talgo of Spain in June after it was knocked off the initial shortlist of five potential bidders.
The new trains will be 400 metres long, carrying more than 1,000 people and travelling at over 225 miles per hour. In a statement on Thursday the government said the deal would support 2,500 jobs across the UK.
The new trains will not only run on the new HS2 line, which will travel from London to Manchester via Birmingham — with a spur to the East Midlands — but will also be used on other conventional lines. They would be 15 per cent lighter with 30 per cent more seats than comparable high-speed trains in Europe such as the Italian ETR 1000, officials said.
The contracts include 12 years of maintenance — carried out at a new HS2 depot near Birmingham — which could be extended in future over the 35-year life of the rolling stock.
The government last month announced major cutbacks to both HS2 and the “HS3” project, which connects several northern cities, in an attempt to shave tens of billions of pounds off the cost.
Grant Shapps, transport secretary, said the deal placed Britain “at the forefront of the high-speed rail revolution”. “This is another landmark step in the delivery of HS2, which will open up new employment and leisure opportunities for millions of people,” he said.
HS2 has faced a series of contract disputes including a lawsuit brought by the US contractor Bechtel over a £1.3bn award to build the station at Old Oak Common in west London, which was given to Balfour Beatty. HS2 later won the case.
In 2017, engineering group CH2M — now Jacobs — handed back a £170m contract to design the second phase of HS2 after Mace, a losing rival in the tender, threatened legal action. Mace pointed out that Mark Thurston, a former chief executive, was a former CH2M employee — as was his predecessor, Roy Hill, who had filled the role on a temporary basis.
Hitachi and Alstom win £2.8bn trains contract for UK’s high-speed railway
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