Stabling and maintaining the new, state-of-the-art Class 700 fleet

A new purpose built train care facility in West Sussex

The purpose-built Three Bridges train care facility in Crawley, West Sussex, was completed in summer 2015 and is one of two new maintenance depots for the GTR Thameslink route. Together, the two new depots at Three Bridges and Hornsey stable and maintain the state-of-the-art Class 700 fleet with the Hornsey depot able to take six other class of trains as well for use on Great Northern and Thameslink routes.

The new facility was built and commissioned minimising disruption to the existing live operational depot and mainline services.

 Three Bridges key facts:

• There are five roads in the main facility building (MFB) with an additional 11 stabling roads outside
• There’s one tandem head wheel lathe
• The depot has two Bogie Drops in tandem configuration
• There are two Carriage Wash Machines which work down to -3°C
• The MFB is 256m long and 40m wide – equivalent area of two football pitches
• Approximately 150 Siemens and GTR depot staff are based on site
• The depot is powered by a 750 volt DC 3rd rail, and has a 25,000 volt overhead line test track in the MFB
• There are two 12.5 tonne gantry cranes in the storage area and a 20 tonne gantry crane in the wheel lathe area
• All five roads in the MFB have 2.5 tonne overhead cranes to access the top of trains, for example when working on air conditioning units
• The depot has its own battery operated shunter to push trains into the wheel lathe
• End to end, the whole site is 1. 4 miles long.