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The British Rail Class 196 '' Civity'' is a class of
diesel multiple unit A diesel multiple unit or DMU is a multiple-unit train powered by on-board diesel engines. A DMU requires no separate locomotive, as the engines are incorporated into one or more of the carriages. Diesel-powered single-unit railcars are also ...
built for
West Midlands Trains West Midlands Trains (WMT) is a train operating company in the United Kingdom. It operates passenger trains on the West Midlands franchise between London and the English Midlands under two trade names: West Midlands Railway (WMR) (within the ...
by Spanish rolling stock manufacturer CAF. A total of 26 units have been built; 12 two-car units and 14 four-car units. They are the first train of the Civity family to feature end gangways.


History

Shortly after the announcement that a consortium of Abellio, Mitsui and JR East had been awarded the West Midlands franchise, West Midlands Trains confirmed they had placed an order for 26 diesel multiple units based on CAF's ''Civity'' platform. The first completed unit started testing at the
Velim railway test circuit The Velim test center ( cs, Zkušební centrum Velim) is a railway rolling stock testing facility at Cerhenice, close to the town of Kolín in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. Perhaps its most notable feature is the Velim railwa ...
in December 2019. The first vehicle arrived at
Tyseley TMD Tyseley TMD is a railway traction maintenance depot situated in Tyseley, Birmingham, England. Origins To counter the critic of the Great Western Railway (GWR) actually standing for ''"The Great Way Round"'', the GWR started a series of strai ...
in Birmingham on 17 April 2020, having travelled by ship from
Cuxhaven Cuxhaven (; ) is an independent town and seat of the Cuxhaven district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town includes the northernmost point of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the shore of the North Sea at the mouth of the Elbe River. Cuxhaven has ...
to Hull. Revenue services using the new fleet began on 17 October 2022, on services between Shrewsbury and Birmingham.


Operators


West Midlands Trains

West Midlands Trains will use the Class 196 fleet to replace their 23 Class 170/5 ''Turbostar'' units on services between Birmingham and Shrewsbury via Telford. They will also run on Birmingham to Hereford services from 2023, with occasional appearances on the Snow Hill Lines (Dorridge & Stratford-upon-Avon to Worcester). Six 2-car units will be allocated to the initial services operated on the
East West Rail East West Rail is a major project to establish a strategic railway connecting East Anglia with Central, Southern and Western England. In particular, it plans to build (or rebuild) a line linking Oxford and Cambridge via Bicester, Milton Keyne ...
route between Oxford and Milton Keynes.


Named units

Unit 196101 is named ''Charles Darwin''.


Fleet details


Vehicle numbering

Individual vehicles are numbered in the ranges as follows, with the last three digits of each vehicle number matching those of the unit to which the vehicle belongs: European Vehicle Numbers for the fleet are devised by prefixing the domestic vehicle number with type code 95, country code 70, and a
leading zero A leading zero is any 0 digit that comes before the first nonzero digit in a number string in positional notation.. For example, James Bond's famous identifier, 007, has two leading zeros. Any zeroes appearing to the left of the first non-zero d ...
; "95700...".


See also

*
British Rail Class 195 The British Rail Class 195 '' Civity'' is a class of diesel multiple-unit passenger train manufactured by CAF, owned by Eversholt Rail Group and currently operated by Northern Trains. A total of 58 units have been built; 25 two-car units and 3 ...
- A diesel multiple unit variant of the CAF ''Civity UK'' platform built for Northern. *
British Rail Class 197 The British Rail Class 197 is a class of diesel multiple unit passenger train built by CAF, based on its '' Civity'' platform. They are currently operated by Transport for Wales, split into 51 two-car units and 26 three-car units. The first t ...
- A diesel multiple unit variant of the CAF ''Civity UK'' platform being built for
Transport for Wales Rail Transport for Wales Rail Limited, branded as Transport for Wales and TfW Rail ( and ), is a Welsh publicly owned train operating company, a subsidiary of Transport for Wales (TfW), a Welsh Government-owned company. It commenced operations of t ...
. * British Rail Class 331 - An electric multiple unit variant of the CAF ''Civity UK'' platform also built for Northern. *
British Rail Class 397 The British Rail Class 397 '' Civity'' is a class of electric multiple unit built by Spanish rolling stock manufacturer CAF for lease to TransPennine Express by Eversholt Rail Group. A total of twelve five-car units were built to operate serv ...
- An electric multiple unit variant of the CAF ''Civity UK'' platform built for
TransPennine Express TransPennine Express (TPE), legally First TransPennine Express Limited, is a British train operating company owned by FirstGroup that operates the TransPennine Express franchise. It runs regional and inter-city rail services between the major ci ...
.


Notes


References

{{Civity UK, state=collapsed 195 CAF multiple units Train-related introductions in 2022