The British Rail Mark 5A is a type of railway vehicle in use in the UK. 52 standard carriages and 14 driving trailers were built by Spanish manufacturer CAF, and all are currently operated by

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 ...

. They first entered service on 24 August 2019.

Description

It was first announced by TransPennine Express in 2016 that they were to procure 126 new vehicles from CAF, which included 66 Mark 5A locomotive-hauled coaches. They would be formed into 13 five-carriage sets, hauled by locomotives. This equates to 65 coaches for total service, with the 66th coach being a spare Driving Trailer. TPE68, Northants Loop, Apr19

The sets are currently used on services between

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

and

Scarborough Scarborough or Scarboro may refer to: People * Scarborough (surname) * Earl of Scarbrough Places Australia * Scarborough, Western Australia, suburb of Perth * Scarborough, New South Wales, suburb of Wollongong * Scarborough, Queensland, su ...

as well as between Manchester Airport and Redcar Central. Each set is composed of 1 first class carriage with guards area and catering provision, 1 standard class carriage with PRM toilet, 2 standard class carriages and a standard class Driving Trailer (DT). In October 2016, production started on these coaches, and in March 2017, CAF and TPE released a photo of the first completed bodyshell. The first completed rake was sent for testing at

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 March 2018, the second set being delivered straight to the UK in May 2018 via Portbury ahead of their planned entry into service in the autumn of that year. TransPennine Express have branded their new trains under the general name ''Nova'', with the Class 68 + Mark 5A combination given the name ''Nova 3''. In April 2019, the first ''Nova 3'' set was officially handed over from CAF to TPE, after a mandatory period of fault-free running. As of 2022, 4 sets are used daily, making them the most under utilised fleets of passenger stock in the country at 5 years old.

Operation

The first set entered service on 24 August 2019 between Liverpool Lime Street and Scarborough. The ''Nova 3'' was officially launched on 25 November 2019 at Liverpool Lime Street station alongside other members of the new Nova fleet.

References

{{British Rail Coaches, state=collapsed

Mark 5 Mark 5 is the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Taken with the calming of the sea in , there are "four striking works hichfollow each other without a break": an exorcism, a healing, and the raisin ...

CAF rolling stock Train-related introductions in 2019