New facility will maintain the Class 700 EMU fleet being introduced for Great Northern and Thameslink services.
Siemens officially opened its traincare centre at Hornsey, North London, on December 13 which will house and maintain the Class 700 fleet it has built for use on Thameslink services.
It is one of two new depots built for the fleet, the other being at Three Bridges near Crawley in West Sussex.
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The new Hornsey depot, which is in addition to and not instead of the existing Great Northern EMU depot there, includes a maintenance building, sidings and servicing facilities. It will be used for the Thameslink cross-London Class 700 fleet plus the Great Northern suburban Class 717 fleet, the first of which is due to replace Class 313 sets in late 2018.
Together, the old and new Hornsey depots have created one of Britain’s largest train servicing facilities – covering an area of 72,500m², equivalent to more than 12 football pitches. This includes stabling for 188 vehicles, an underframe cleaning facility, two carriage wash machines, two bogie drops, and full depot signalling.
Class 700s are due to start operating out of King’s Cross from the middle of this year, then from May 2018 they will also work through central London to Gatwick and Brighton when the Thameslink service starts to ramp up to 24 trains per hour in each direction between Blackfriars and St Pancras International.
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