It was a day of disruption and concern. On 8 May, 2021, Hitachi Class 80X trains run by London North Eastern Railway (LNER), Great Western Railway (GWR), TransPennine Express (TPE) and Hull Trains were promptly withdrawn from service. The reason was concern regarding cracks found on several of the vehicles.
Last week, ORR released a report. It looked at how the industry responded to the event. It said there had been no wrongdoing found – indeed much of the report compliments actions taken by Hitachi and the affected train operating companies. But it also set out recommendations — with suggestions considering everything from standards to design, manufacture to incident management.
The discovery of the cracks
The first cracks were discovered during scheduled maintenance – originally this was on eight trains, about which GWR sent out a notice on 11 April 2021. The cracks were located in the area of the bolster, a critical area where the load of the vehicle and other forces are transferred to the wheel assembly, commonly referred to as the bogie.
Specifically, cracks were found close to the yaw damper bracket and anti-roll bar fixing points. ORR’s review generally describes these as ‘yaw damper cracks’ because of their vicinity. But then on 7 May, cracks were found at the other end of the assemblies – near weld lines where lifting plates attach to the vehicle body. Engineers assessing these ‘lifting plate cracks’ said there was a chance of the plates detaching.
The number of times both yaw damper cracks and lifting plate cracks were found led to the withdrawal of all Class 800, 801 and 802 rolling stock from service until all vehicles had been checked.
The ORR review
The scope of the review by ORR was as follows: