Greater Anglia Completes £6 Million Upgrade of London Orient Way Depot

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On 27 October, UK train operator Greater Anglia announced the completion of a £6 million infrastructure upgrade at its Orient Way depot near Stratford, London, to support the routine maintenance and cleaning of its new-generation electric fleets, the Class 720 and Class 745. The works were delivered while the depot remained in operation.

The upgrade focused on two areas: hygiene assurance and operational safety. The depot installed 70 controlled emission toilet (CET) emptying units, which use vacuum-powered hoses to extract waste from train toilet tanks and, after flushing, discharge it into the depot's water treatment system; a separate hose is used to fill the clean water tanks, physically isolated from the waste lines. More than 3 km of raised walkways were also laid, covering all 12 sidings, to provide maintenance staff with safe access to door and roof areas. Mechanical and electrical infrastructure was upgraded in parallel to increase capacity for continuous 24-hour operations. A new 16-tonne sand storage silo was added to supply onboard sanding equipment, improving traction during autumn and winter when wheel-rail adhesion declines.

Pod-Trak served as principal contractor, delivering the combined civil, mechanical and electrical works while the depot remained operational, with a published project value of £6 million. IPS Design & Consultancy was responsible for GRIP 3 to 5 stage design. Dura Composites supplied low-embodied-carbon glass-reinforced polymer (GRP) walkways, driver access platforms, safety handrails and the Dura Envirosump liquid collection system, the latter used to collect train wash runoff and meet compliance requirements for front-end cleaning without additional drainage civil works.

The 12 sidings must simultaneously accommodate the parking, cleaning and maintenance of both the Class 720 (Aventra platform) and Class 745 (Stadler FLIRT) train types, with the spatial dimensions of the raised walkways and driver access platforms customised to the interface conditions of both types. The capacity and layout of the CET units correspond to the vacuum emptying and filling specifications of the new fleet's toilet tanks, rather than being partial retrofits of existing facilities.

This investment forms part of Greater Anglia's overall £1.4 billion modernisation programme, which covers rolling stock replacement, station improvements and infrastructure upgrades; the £6 million at Orient Way corresponds solely to infrastructure modifications of the depot itself and does not include train procurement or fleet maintenance contract amounts.