Vivarail: From a historic run across the Forth Bridge through to new export plans …

This has been an unrivalled week of ‘firsts’ for Vivarail.  In a few short days the organisation has:

• Carried out the longest journey on battery power across the iconic Forth Bridge
• Welcomed guests from around the world to its train
• Announced new export plans to North America
  and more …

The rolling stock manufacturer has written the article below with more details.

On Friday night we left our depot at Polmadie bound for Inverkeithing, ready for a trip back over the Forth Bridge in the daylight.

Although a distance of 47 miles is well within the range of the train, it was exhilarating as we set off watched by a helicopter, go-pro and static cameras, and were finally able to prove that!

The train is equipped with 6 batteries, each housing 100kWh of power so we knew we had plenty of redundancy but even so, with so many eyes on us this was the moment to prove that battery trains are ready for service today – and our wonderful train succeeded!

Monday 1st November was our official launch where the COP train’s name was revealed – Viva Venturer. Ian Walmsley joined us to explain how he arrived at its name and we have had special plates made up, which will be sold for charity once we are back home!

Viva Venturer is truly a ground-breaking train – its range of 100km combined with the ability to recharge in only 10 minutes – move it into a different league of battery trains. Without Adrian Shooter none of this would have happened – there is no need to recite his record of achievement over the last 51 years, but we wanted to recognise exactly what he has done by developing this new technology. Bill Reeve kindly made time to do a special presentation, which (for once) we had actually managed to keep secret from Adrian!

Thanks to Bill, Alex Hynes, Martin Frobisher, Ian Walmsley and everyone who joined us on that maiden passenger voyage on the Venturer! It was a very special day.

One of our major successes has been the success of our export sales.  RDC of Pittsburgh ordered a 2-car battery train which is now running demonstration trips for Pop Up Metro – a new concept in urban travel for the United States.

A second train is on order and being built right now – ready for shipping to the US shortly.

RDC’s Chairman, Henry Posner III, has been with us this week, explaining just why the Class 230 battery trains are ideal for the North American market and his plans to expand Pop Up Metro over the coming years.  Just this week he has received new enquiries from Pittsfield and Portland regarding buying the COP train itself.  

Other international guests have come to see the train and learn about our traction and charging technology.

From Remed, Carlos Alvarez De Alba, gave a passionate speech about bringing zero-emission battery trains to Mexico.  Vivarail and Remed have been working together for three years on projects across Latin America.  Although Covid has delayed several of those, Carlos explained how important it is to introduce new technologies and how Remed intends to do that.  

Photo credit: Vivarail

Download article