2018 at Swansea Maliphant depot - from footbridge

Swansea Maliphant depot (also known as Swansea Train Maintenance Centre) is a railway depot built for AT300 units from the

Hitachi A-train The Hitachi A-train is a family of rail rolling stock built and designed by Hitachi Rail using a common base and construction techniques. The stock is designed to facilitate a number of product life-cycle improvements including ease of manufacture ...

under the

Intercity Express Programme The Intercity Express Programme (IEP) is an initiative of the Department for Transport (DfT) in the United Kingdom to procure new trains to replace the InterCity 125 and InterCity 225 fleets on the East Coast Main Line and Great Western Main Li ...

. The depot is situated north of

Swansea railway station , symbol_location = gb , symbol = rail , image = Swansea Railway Station - geograph.org.uk - 1150393.jpg , borough = Swansea, City and County of Swansea , country = Wales , coordinate ...

by the

South Wales Main Line The South Wales Main Line ( cy, Prif Linell De Cymru), originally known as the London, Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway or simply as the Bristol and South Wales Direct Railway, is a branch of the Great Western Main Line in Great Britain. ...

. Having been used as sidings until 2016, the depot is presently operated by

Agility Trains Agility Trains is consortium of Hitachi, Axa UK and John Laing, which has been awarded a contract to design, manufacture, and maintain a fleet of long-distance class 800 and 801 trains to replace the InterCity 125 fleet as part of the Department f ...

as part of their contract to maintain the Class 800 fleet for

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

History

Swansea (High Street) railway station was built in 1850 for the

South Wales Railway The South Wales Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd De Cymru) was a main line railway which opened in stages from 1850, connecting the Great Western Railway from Gloucester to South Wales. It was constructed on the broad gauge. An original aspiration was to ...

, which was absorbed into the

in 1863. Sidings were constructed north of the station on the east side of the main line railway out of High Street station, opposite a goods station on the west side; ''Maliphant Street'' passed beneath the main line of the railway north of the goods station. The original facilities included a workshop, turntable, and carriage shed.Ordnance Survey, 1879, 1:500 By the 20th century the turntable and workshops had been removed and the site had been converted into extensive linear sidings, the sidings remained in that form for the next 100 years, with some changes to layout.

Present

It was first announced in 2012 that the current sidings were to be the site of a new service depot for

's new AT300s from the

, with construction due to start in 2015. Modifications of the original plans were submitted in 2013; changes to the plans included expansion of some buildings, but they did not expand the scale of work expected to be carried out at the site. The depot was completed in 2016 and became operational in 2017, employing 80 people. It includes an inspection building as well as train-washing and fuelling facilities.

References

External links

*{{citation, url =http://wam.swansea.gov.uk/WAM/doc/Historic%20Scans-41217.pdf?extension=.pdf&id=41217&appid=1001&location=DT22072013&contentType=application/pdf&pageCount=1, title = IEP Depot early works (Application number 2001/1305), publisher = City and Council of Swansea, year = 2011, author= Jacobs / Agility Trains / Hitachi Railway depots in Wales Rail transport in Swansea