Craigentinny (Edinburgh) and Doncaster
Carr. Bounds Green depot will maintain
all thirty Class 801 electric trains, whereas
Doncaster is responsible for maintenance
of all the Class 800 bi-modes. In addition,
nineteen TPE Class 802 ‘Nova 1’ trains
will use Doncaster - with Hull Trains’ Class
802s being based at Bounds Green.
Capacity at the depot is measured in
half sets - therefore a nine-car set would
count as two half sets. Outside there are
14 stabling positions. The equivalent
of 12½ Azuma sets return to Doncaster
each night for servicing, maintenance or
stabling.
Condition
The IEP trains are subject to
comprehensive remote condition
monitoring (RCM), coupled with a
condition-based maintenance regime.
This programme attempts to use RCM to
link maintenance engineering, reliability in
service and maintenance development.
There are essentially two stages to
this, the first being the comprehensive
testing of the new trains to find out how
systems perform and wear. Faults or
unexpected wear rates that arise need to
be understood so that the maintenance
regime can be tailored to eliminate costly
failures in service.
Some obvious components that need
to be monitored include brake pads,
bogie parts, wheel bearings, wheel
profiles and wheel wear characteristics.
The Hitachi maintenance regime goes
much further than this, such that the
trains are festooned with sensors.
Bearing temperatures, door mechanism
performance, engine and transmission
parameters are but a few of the items on
a long list that are reported. Wi-Fi and 4G
can be used to download the data in real
time.
Data accrued as the trains operate
can then be used to tailor the second
stage of the programme: maintenance
and overhauls. The more evidence that
becomes available on how the systems
operate and can potentially fail, the easier
it becomes to make sensible decisions on
maintenance intervals (for fixed-period
servicing) and wear allowances (for
condition- based maintenance).
Developing faults will reach a threshold
at which an automatic alert is raised.
This might for instance be due to a dooroperating system that isn’t performing
to specification. If the failure mode is
understood, a decision can then be made
on whether to carry out repair work
immediately, or on whether the problem
can wait until the next scheduled depot
visit, or perhaps on whether the train
needs to be re-diagrammed in order to
bring forward a planned maintenance
intervention.
The introduction of a fully condition-
based maintenance system is new to
Hitachi, both in the UK and in Japan.
Ashford depot uses condition-based
information to make maintenance
decisions on the Hitachi Class 395 fleet,
but the IEP programme represents
Hitachi’s first fully integrated application
of remote condition monitoring and a
condition-based maintenance regime.Doncaster Carr berthing diagram.
FE ATURE 1919