Plenty of comment on the other blogs about Ramsgate’s latest railway project so here is some from me and Dave Richards. HSBC Rail (UK) Ltd have constructed a £34,000,000 maintenance facility on the existing Ramsgate Traincare Depot site. This will provide a modern, light maintenance facility complete with bogie drop, trainwash, controlled emissions tanking, and stabling for the existing Kent railway stock. Overnight stabling and servicing facilities will also be provided for some of the new Hitachi class 395 trains. Works comprised of the demolition of existing heavy lift shop and removal of eight existing sidings. The construction is an 8,000 square meter, five road maintenance shed with attached three storey office, stores and workshop.The new main shed area is capable of accommodating thirty-six cars and incorporates two heavy lift roads, including a bogie drop facility. The remaining roads within the shed are located within a ‘swimming pool’ type area with the track on stools allowing under-train inspection and maintenance work. Outside, seven new sidings, with a six car train wash to accommodate 66 cars are being constructed. Work included the diversion of Ramsgate’s drinking water ring main which ran under the proposed new facility. The depot is sited above a major drinking water aquifer.
The Hitachi-built class 395 will cut at least 20 minutes off the journey time from Ramsgate to London via Canterbury West. The Javelins are capable of 140 miles per hour.
Dave Richards has taken some pictures of the construction work in progress for anyone who missed it click here to look at them.
Click here for sample pages of his book about the history of railways in Ramsgate
Click here for Southeastern Railways website about the new fast train service.
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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.