British Rail Class 395 - Design

Design

The 400 Series mini-shinkansen and Hitachi's A Train design form the basis of the Class 395 design. From the 400 series the class inherits the same 6 car 20m carriage with doors at one-third and two-thirds along the carriage. both are designed for operations at high-speed on newly built lines as well as lower speed on conventional legacy lines, unlike the steel bodied Series 400 the Class 395 has its carbody (walls, roof, floor) formed from friction stir welded doubled walled hollow extruded aluminium body panels, a technology Hitachi classes as being part of its A-Train train family specification.

The train consists of six carriage units, with all axles on the middle four cars powered, the outer cars are unpowered, but mount the pantographs. The bogies are bolsterless, both powered and unpowered bogies share common design to simplify maintenance. Each 6 car unit can work in multiple with another, creating 12 car trains; coupling is automated and is designed to take less than 60 seconds.

For reliability passenger doors use a relatively simple sliding pneumatic system already in use and development for several decades on Shinkansen trains. The brake system was supplied by Faiveley. Approximately 40% of the train equipment by value was sourced from European suppliers.

There are 340 seats per 6 car train, in standard class formation with 12 additional tip up seats in a wheelchair area. There are two toilets per unit, one of which is equipped for disabled access.

The trains meet UK Railway Group Standards (RGS), and European Union Technical Specifications for Interoperability (TSI) standards for crashworthiness, and UK or EU standards for structure load bearing behaviour, material strength, aerodynamics, noise and fire resistance.

Each train has a Train Management System (TMS) including equipment monitoring systems, communications, air-conditioning etc., and equipment control including Selective Door Operation (SDO); the SDO system uses GPS and train speed integration to estimate position.