Operational changes done to stop train depot noise in Scarborough
It's caused sleep disruption complaints from residents for more than a year
TransPennine Express have made operational changes so some trains in Scarborough do not stay at the depot overnight.
It has caused complaints for more than a year now with residents being unable to get a full night's sleep because of the Nova 3 noise.
Paul Staples, Fleet Director at TransPennine Express, said:
"What we're doing instead is those trains into the railway station as normal on their last services, stopping them there and then we start them up in the next morning before their next services go out as usual. We do our fuelling and our toilet services on the other side of the country in Manchester.
"We're very grateful for our interactions with Scarborough Borough Council. We wanted to make sure that this was the right thing for them to do and they were very supportive of our plans. We also had to do a lot of development work to make sure that the processes we used to make sure the trains are safe and presentable could all be transferred safely to the station.
"In terms of the timetable that people are seeing from Scarborough, hopefully the services are unaffected. We recognise the importance of the services to Scarborough and that came across very strongly in our discussions with Scarborough Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council.
"Currently our colleagues on the depot from Arriva are working for us at the station, so the depot isn't used for very much at the moment. One day we need to get that resource back into the regional depot resource bank so I think we will be looking at options, which won't be any time before May next year, for bringing other rolling stock on which does not have the noise problems that the Class 68 brings but when we do that, we will be very careful to make sure we understand the problems we've suffered with these locomotives and that we don't repeat them.
"I think the depot is really important to Scarborough as a town because of the jobs we provide there and its general contribution to Scarborough's economy. All the people who are employed at the depot are still employed and they're now doing work for us on the station. We'll be looking at plans now to see if we can get something that's acceptable to residents and to the Council back onto that depot as soon as possible."
He added that residents around the railway station should not notice too much difference with the noise there:
"They still get the trains anyway because they arrive at the station to drop their passengers off and what we're doing is a lot of work, we've done a lot of research into how we prepare the trains before they go into service and how we shut the trains down. But ultimately the railway unfortunately cannot be silent, it does make a noise so our job is to make as little noise as possible."