UK: Representatives of the planned Global Centre for Rail Excellence test facility in South Wales have agreed that securing funding is challenging but reiterated their hope that it can be secured soon.
Speaking to Rail Business UK at the InnoTrans trade fair in Berlin, GCRE noted that the initial seed funding from both the UK government (£20m, plus £7·4m for research and development) and the Welsh government (£50m) represented a ‘highly unusual’ situation, with joint support for an initiative a rare but important milestone.
Securing the required £330m of private investment has been challenging. ‘We are in an active process, and we are not pretending trying to raise in the order of £330m is easy’, a representative commented. ‘However, we are optimistic that we will achieve an important milestone in those conversations in the coming weeks and that we can close everything off by the end of the calendar year, or at least this financial year.’
Nevertheless, Rail Business UK understands some discussions are under way between GCRE, the Welsh government and other stakeholders about how the project could evolve or be scaled down should the search for investment not come to a successful conclusion. It is understood that one investment proposal had progressed to a significant extent before collapsing, but GCRE is once again in talks with at least one party showing strong interest.
End of 2027 goal
Assuming an investment agreement can be finalised, GCRE hopes ’to be open for business and operational by the tail end of 2027. It is quite an aggressive timetable but we believe it is achievable.’
GCRE and representatives of Industry Wales highlighted the international interest in a facility that could handle intensive loads on the infrastructure, saying this interest had justified the decision to brand itself ‘global’.
’We expect to be working with clients from around the world. Well over 200 companies, many UK based but also a significant number from overseas, have confirmed in writing that as soon as we are open for business they are keen to come and use our facilities’, said a GCRE insider.
Infrastructure clients will be able to investigate accelerated wear and tear and it will be possible to test to the point of destruction, something GCRE said is currently only available at the Pueblo test site in Colorado. ‘There is nowhere outside the USA where in one integrated facility you can innovate, test and certify infrastructure as well as rolling stock as well as the systems that support them.’
GCRE’s use case
GCRE has three Class 350/2 EMUs and ’we will be crush loading them and running them autonomously around the inner loop 16 h a day five days a week. That will see them putting down, at a bare minimum, five million gross tonnes per 10-week cycle. That will be followed by a possession of between 10 days to two weeks where infrastructure will be removed and replaced as required. After that we will repeat the process endlessly.’
One interested party is understood to be HS1 Ltd, where the infrastructure was installed with a projected life of 40 years. GCRE explained that ‘it is important for the board and shareholders to know if this under or over-estimated the actual life; is it 40 years, 36 years or 45 years? Understanding this has significant operational and financial implications so we could put a section of the existing HS1 infrastructure into GCRE and accelerate that degradation to get a more accurate, empirically established, scientific judgement on the state of the assets and how they will look in future years.’
The GCRE team suggested that if the facility had been available in recent years then a number of rail projects that ran over budget or beyond their expected completion date may have been delivered better; the system integration challenges faced by Crossrail may have been resolved more quickly had the various assets been replicated in a dynamic environment so that they could have been adjusted or modified before installation on the live railway.
GCRE is also looking to its future role as a centre for training with university and industrial partners in the UK and beyond. ’Network operators will have a permanent presence on site and we are quietly hopeful that other international network operators will choose to have a sizeable and regular, if not permanent presence on site. We know that overseas national operators are closely monitoring what we are up to.’
Global Centre for Rail Excellence project scope
- electrified 6·9 km outer testing track for speeds up to 200 km/h
- electrified 4 km low-speed inner infrastructure testing track for speeds of up to 60 km/h
- dual platform station environment
- 25 kV 50 Hz overhead electrification infrastructure
- research, development, education and training/conference centre
- operations and control centre/office
- staff facilities
- rolling stock storage/sidings
- rolling stock maintenance facility
- Neath and Brecon branch line connection and signalling upgrade.
