On the 1st July 2010, the first Desiro Class 380 was shown to Eversholt Rail, FirstGroup, ScotRail, Siemens Mobility and Transport Scotland at the Siemens test centre in Wegberg-Wildenrath, Germany. The new owners and interested parties gathered to mark the official ‘roll out’ of the Desiro Class 380 at the Siemens test centre. A mock up of the new train has previously been on display at Glasgow Central station and in June 2009 was gifted to the Museum of Transport to be used as a permanent exhibit.

Eversholt Rail Group is investing £185 million in the 38 new trains and has played an active part in the Procurement and Project Management during their development.

Transport Scotland is funding a £60m programme of platform extensions to accommodate these longer trains some of which, from the autumn, will run primarily on Ayrshire, Inverclyde and Renfrewshire routes, boosting Scotland’s transport system by adding more than 7,500 passenger seats to the rail network.

The new fleet will be maintained at ScotRail’s expanded Shields depot in Glasgow one of four major train depots in Scotland - to accommodate maintenance, cleaning and stabling for the new fleet. The project has created 130 new jobs.

The new trains will displace Class 334’s allowing the older trains to be cascaded to operate on the Airdrie to Bathgate line which is being re-opened as a new link between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

More on the Siemens website HERE.

Desiros, which can be built as electrics or diesels are used worldwide and are already a familiar sight on Britain’s railways, with various operators using them across the length and breadth of the country.

Examples of units already in UK service are as follows in this Wikipedia link HERE.

The class 380’s have some of the latest features to aid weight reduction and economy, instead of having conventional wiring looms, they have multiplex wiring which sends signals to and from components along a single wire, thus avoiding the need to have a wire leading to each component. Doors are electrically operated avoiding the need to have a continually working air compressor and a new Vossloh Kiepe highly efficient air-conditioning system is fitted on the new trains.

More information on this translation from the Vossloh website HERE.