£680 million investment for West Midlands Trains

A £680 million ($897million) order for new trains has been welcomed by West Midlands Rail (WMR), a consortium of 16 local councils set up to manage the regions rail services. The order, made up of 413 carriages, comes from West Midlands Trains (WMT) who will run local services on behalf of WMR and Department of Transport (D0T) from December onwards to help increase capacity and improve journey times. WMT will operate local services until March 2026.
October 19, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
A £680 million ($897million) order for new trains has been welcomed by West Midlands Rail (WMR), a consortium of 16 local councils set up to manage the regions rail services. The order, made up of 413 carriages, comes from West Midlands Trains (WMT) who will run local services on behalf of WMR and Department of Transport (D0T) from December onwards to help increase capacity and improve journey times. WMT will operate local services until March 2026.


WMT is made up of Abellio, JR East and Mitsui and the order is part of a near £1 billion ($1,319 million) investment into the franchise.

513 Bombardier Trains and Construcciones y Auxilar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) will manufacture 107 new trains for the next West Midlands franchise. CAF will also produce 80 diesel carriages to provide dedicated services for journeys to towns and cities around Birmingham.  

A total of 333 of the new trains will feature air conditioning, free Wi-Fi and in-seat power sockets provided as standard – produced by Bombardier in Derby.

Cllr Roger Lawrence, chair of WMR and transport lead on the West Midlands combined authority, said: "This is a very significant investment in new trains that will bring more space, more services and improved comfort for passengers.  

"We know a key issue for passengers is overcrowding at peak times so we are pleased that these new carriages will provide space for an extra 85,000 passengers on rush hour services into Birmingham and London.”

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Croydon’s first pure electric ‘emission free’ buses hit the streets
    December 11, 2014
    Transport for London (TfL), Arriva and UK bus manufacturer Optare have introduced the latest electric buses to the capital’s fleet. The two Optare MetroCity buses are now in service in Croydon on a route is used by around 4,700 passengers a day. The buses are the latest addition to Europe’s greenest bus fleet and will increase TfL’s experience and understanding of this relatively new technology. The buses have zero tail pipe emissions at point of use, resulting in lower overall carbon emissions.
    Read More
  • Thales - Balfour Beatty Rail consortium awarded €400 million Danish contract
    March 14, 2012
    Banedanmark, the Danish infrastructure owner, has awarded the Thales - Balfour Beatty Rail consortium, a €400 million contract for the installation of a state-of-the-art European signalling system on nearly 1,200 km of rail lines across Jutland.
    Read More
  • A natural fit
    May 18, 2012
    Xerox Chairman and CEO Ursula Burns will deliver the keynote address at today’s opening plenary in Fort Washington. Two years after leading the company’s $6.4Bn acquisition of ACS, Burns provides some insights into Xerox’s expanding role in the transportation sector.
    Read More
  • Cost benefit analysis ‘can’t be carried out with a cookbook’
    June 25, 2018
    There is far more to working out the worth of a project than simply filling in a few headings on a spreadsheet. David Crawford surveys some recent thinking from the US and Canada. Cost benefit analysis (CBA) “can’t be carried out with a cookbook”, warns US analyst Professor Robert J Brent. “ You can’t just get out a spreadsheet and fill in the data for all the headings. Each transport CBA should have something that is distinctive, in terms of location (for example, for a rural area), types of user
    Read More

Highlighted Content