Paddington shut after Hitachi train on test run tears down power lines
Blow to multi-billion pound roll-out of Hitachi vehicles
Commuters faced travel chaos across southern England today after a high-speed train tore down overhead wires outside one of Britain’s busiest stations.
The state-of-the-art train, operated by the government contractor Hitachi, was on a test run when it caused extensive damage to 500 metres of overhead lines last night.
Paddington Station, which caters for about 90,000 passengers a day, was closed during the morning rush hour today and all mainline rail services from central London to Heathrow airport were cancelled.
The disruption caused mayhem across the Great Western Railway (GWR), which serves Bristol, Cardiff and the West Country, with a significantly reduced service across the network and all trains terminating at Reading.
Some passengers were stranded on trains between Paddington — the country’s seventh busiest station — and Reading for several hours after the loss of power to the line.
Network Rail said that it expected to open two out of four train lines into Paddington by midday today, but warned that severe disruption would last until the end of the day.
The incident was blamed on one of the new generation of high-speed trains being built by Hitachi as a long-term replacement for trains used on the Great Western routes.
The train, a bi-mode class 802, designed for the Great Western route to Devon and Cornwall, was being tested on the line when it is believed to have caused damage to overhead cables near Ealing, west London.
The test train, which has not yet been delivered to GWR and was not carrying passengers at the time, was being operated between Hitachi’s London and Bristol depots. An investigation is underway as to how it pulled down the overhead cables.
It represents a further blow to Hitachi’s multi-billion pound roll-out of intercity trains on Britain’s busiest lines.
[...]
