Case Study: First Capital Connect G310 Winter Failures

The First Capital Connect G310 Problem

First Capital Connect encountered a sudden and severe problem with extreme consequences.

Over 40 of their G310 traction motors had suffered an in-service failure following the heaviest snowfall that Central London had seen in nearly 20 years.  In short, their G310 traction motors could not cope with working in such severe weather.

First Capital Connect had not experienced anything like this before.

With the sudden loss of over 40 of their G310 traction motors, they did not have enough traction motors to supply their trains. Their contingency plan wasn't geared towards such an extreme loss of traction motors.  Without a full set of trains, they were unable to run a full on-time train service as advertised. Without their full advertised train service running on-time, they were a major contributor to Central London slowly grinding to a halt from the effects of snow.

Consequently, this led to extremely unhappy passengers.

 Ian Duncan, Head of Fleet GN, First Capital Connect stated:  

"This was a great example of FCC, Unipart Rail and Houghton staff working together to understand the potential effect on our customers and putting together unique robust solutions that averted loss of availability and potential severe disruption to our customers".

  
To find out how we solved this problem and received the feedback below, read our Case Study