Published on: Friday, 30 November 2012
Last updated: Wednesday, 5 October 2016
Improvements to the reliability of Greater Anglia’s train fleet have been recognised at the rail industry’s coveted Golden Spanners Awards.
The region’s train operator received two Silver Spanners for better reliability over the last year for both its Intercity and Class 315 train fleets.
The Intercity fleet, which operates on the Norwich – London mainline, has seen over 100% improvement in reliability based on the number of miles per technical incident (which is measured as a technical fault that causes a delay of 3 minutes or more).
Last year miles per incident were recorded at 11,146 miles and are now 22,507, representing an improvement of 101.9%.
The Class 315 fleet, which serves the Metro area (London Liverpoool Street - Shenfield) and the West Anglia route (London Liverpool Street – Chingford) has also seen an improvement in reliability of 63%, going from 7,679 miles per technical incident to 12,567.
The huge improvements in reliability are due to a number of innovations and improvements in the quality of day to day maintenance processes and attention to detail implemented by the teams at Greater Anglia’s Ilford and Crown Point maintenance depots.
On the Intercity fleet, the award winning Remote Train Monitor – a fault detector developed by the team at Crown Point Depot in Norwich which monitors the train while it is in service and reports back on areas that may require attention – has led to big improvements in reliability with many issues being corrected before they can impact upon train performance. The success of this equipment in diagnosing and reporting issues which then prevents problems in service has seen it being used on fleets across the industry.
Greater Anglia has also modified the existing on train communication equipment. Ensuring that it works reliably improves communications between drivers and conductors, reducing delays to train departure.
The Awards, organised by Modern Railways Magazine, celebrate excellence in train maintenance. At the ceremony, held on 23 November 2012, Greater Anglia employees presented a £650 cheque for the Railway Children charity to mark the 50th anniversary this year of the magazine.
Ruud Haket, Managing Director Greater Anglia said: “I am delighted that the improvement in performance since the start of the Greater Anglia franchise has been recognised at the Golden Spanners Awards and would like to congratulate our fleet teams on their hard work.
“The continued improvement in punctuality and reliability across the Greater Anglia network, delivering better train services for our customers in the region, is very pleasing and we will continue to work towards further improvements to provide the consistent levels of train service performance that our customers expect.”
Greater Anglia has consistently delivered improvement in train punctuality since taking over the franchise in February and the moving annual average (MAA) punctuality - measuring performance over a 12 month average - has improved to a new-high of 91.7%, which is the best MAA figure for the East Anglia franchise area for at least 12 years.