Transport for Wales opens new hi-tech training facility in Chester
Transport for Wales has opened a new training facility in Chester which incorporates a state-of the-art train simulator.
One City Place in Chester will play a key role in the training of 64 drivers and 56 conductors over the next year and will also be act as a training hub for station and ticket office staff, dispatchers, and the depot workforce.
The simulator will train drivers to operate the 77 brand new Class 197 trains, the first of which are currently in the final stages of testing and training before entry into service this winter.
Jan Chaudhry-Van der Velde, Transport for Wales Managing Director, commented: “We’re delighted to be opening our brand-new training facility in Chester
“Chester has a long history as a railway city, dating back to the opening of the first railway here in 1840 – our investment in this new facility a stone’s throw away from the station will ensure it will continue to be an important centre for the rail industry for many years to come
“One City Place been fitted out to a very high standard, to ensure we’re providing the best possible facilities for our colleagues.”
TfW is investing more than £800m in new trains to and says the upgrades will allow it to deliver faster, more frequent services with better accessibility and reduced carbon emissions.
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Was there nowhere suitable in Cymru?
Transport for Wales open a facility in Chester ???? Was there nowhere suitable in Wales ?
Chester is part of the TfW network and gets levelling up funding of which Wales has been robbed.
Built in England, probably with English contractors, paying rates to an English local authority, employing English staff to run the place….my head is in my head is in my hands with frustration. What was wrong with Wrecsam a few miles down the road on the economic bones of its arse, other than what a Canadian and an American have brought to the party. I despair .
Sums up the colonist attitude of Wales’ civil servants and kinda says it all about the Labour Government’s pathetic lack of commitment towards creating national infrastructure to unify a country and it’s aversion to true nation buildings
Thinking glass half full, let us cheer the fact that they are set up for training the crews for the new trains. That should mean they actually might run them in 2023. Of course here in West Wales we are unlikely to see them for years…
Transport for Wales are on our side
Text them the question when will we see this rolling stock in Pembroke Dock and Fishguard
Why Chester o bob man TfW???
Why not Bangor, or LlandudnoJunction?????
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Now is the time to bring the Marches back in to Wales
My thoughts exactly. Let the process of annexation begin in earnest. Shift that border east to absorb at least 1/2 of Cheshire, say to the M6, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester, Gloucestershire to beyond the M5, then down to Avonmouth. That should boost the tax take dramatically.
FFS! Extractive economy! Seriously!! Transport for Wales is a Welsh Government owned company. I encourage everyone reading this story to write to your respective Senedd Members about this. This is a disgrace. We’re meant to be building a nation here. This quisling unionist government in Cardiff do everything they can to keep Wales in a dependency relationship. Time and time again they have scuppered plans to create a north-south rail corridor, thus uniting the nation geographically. And now this.
Oh that makes a lot of sense. Open up training facilities in England rather than Wales? And what a load of balderdash Jan Chaudhry-Van der Velde, Transport for Wales Managing Director, uttered their reasoning for using Chester because it had a long history as a railway city, dating back to the opening of the first railway here in 1840, she said” Let me educate the uneducated. Any place that should have chosen for any Transport for Wales training facility should have been the town of Merthyr Tydfil, especially an area crying out for employment In Merthyr Tydfil on the 21zt… Read more »
Why not put it in Onllwyn along with the “Global Centre of Rail Excellence” then we could have two financial disasters for the price of one as the latter is now £100 million over budget and hasn’t even started yet?
Concept of budgetary control is alien to people who get a buzz out of chucking public funds around. Their maxim is that those “coffers” are there to be emptied.
More investment into England which is apparently meant to benefit Wales….
They’re not even trying to hide their theft from us any more. They’re just openly steal from us to our faces. Because they know nobody cares about little “Wales”.
The politicians in the Senedd are not working in the interests of the people of Wales so we should get rid of the gravy train that’s stationed in Cardiff Bay.