He added: “I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has stopped me to tell me about the train that never came.<\/p>\n
“And when that happens, it means missed shifts, missed appointments, and missed opportunities. Today, that starts to change.”<\/p>\n
The DfT said the trains would help deliver the Transpennine Route Upgrade’s aim to boost capacity by 30%, with thousands of additional seats a day across the Pennines by the early to mid-2030s.<\/p>\n
They will run between key destinations across the north including Liverpool Lime Street and Scarborough, Manchester Airport and Saltburn, and Manchester Piccadilly and Hull.<\/p>\n
The DfT added that journey times will be cut by up to 10 minutes between Manchester and Leeds and up to 14 minutes between Manchester and York.<\/p>\n
The trains will be bought by Rock Rail and leased to TransPennine Express, the government added.<\/p>\n
Alstom, which boasts the largest rolling stock train manufacturing site outside of China, secured a \u00a3370m contract in 2024 to produce 10 new London Elizabeth line trains.<\/p>\n
This came less than three months after a redundancy consultation put 1,300 jobs at risk at its Litchurch Lane factory, which dates back to 1876.<\/p>\n
Rob Whyte, managing director UK at Alstom, called the latest agreement a “landmark moment for Britain’s railway”.<\/p>\n
He said: “We couldn’t be prouder that the country’s first main line battery-electric trains will be designed and built in Britain.<\/p>\n
“The fleet will transform journeys across northern England while showcasing the very best of British engineering, innovation and advanced manufacturing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He added: “I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has stopped me to tell me about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-766876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}