Global Centre Of Rail Excellence
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Global Centre Of Rail Excellence
The Global Centre of Rail Excellence (GCRE) is a proposed train, railway infrastructure and technology testing facility, located in Onllwyn, Wales, where the site sits on the border between Neath Port Talbot and Powys. The centre is located on a site previously used for coal mining and a coal washery, with some given over to the new testing centre, which will be unique in Europe due to having a track for testing rail vehicles at high speed, and another test track dedicated to railway infrastructure. History The site, which is at the head of the Dulais and Tawe valleys, had been used for coal production for 200 years, ending in August 2022. It was a deep-mine complex until 1980 when open-casting became the preferred method of extracting. The surface mine was named Nant Helen, and the washery was known as Onllwyn. Both locations were owned by Celtic Energy, who agreed to donate the site to the Welsh Government when coaling operations have finished. The United Kingdom has no a ...
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Onllwyn
Onllwyn () is a small village and community in Neath Port Talbot, Wales, near Seven Sisters. History First developed by the Romans, the local village Banwen is confined to the Roman Road of Sarn Helen. There are two Roman forts and the remains of a Roman Road within the community. Legend has it that St Patrick was born here and taken to Ireland after the area was raided by Irish raiders. A celebration and a march are held on March 17 to mark the event. With over 200 years of coal mining behind it, the parish once had five pits that employed hundreds of men. Now all that remains is a coal washery and coal processing plant. On the route of the former Neath and Brecon Railway, there was a freight only line to the coal washery from the South Wales Main Line at Neath. The site of the coal washery (and the nearby Nant Helen surface mine), is being redeveloped as the Global Centre of Rail Excellence. Onllwyn was involved in several 20th-century coal mining strikes which broug ...
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Hitachi Newton Aycliffe
Hitachi Newton Aycliffe (also known as Newton Aycliffe Manufacturing Facility) is a railway rolling stock assembly plant owned by Hitachi Rail Europe, situated in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, in the North East of England. Construction started in 2013 at a cost of £82 million, with train assembly commencing in 2015. It was the first factory that Hitachi built in Europe, as a result of it winning the Intercity Express Programme tender. Originally on opening, no actual manufacturing operations took place at the site; it assembled components built elsewhere into completed trains. However, for the later classes, some manufacturing took place on site. By October 2017, the plant employed over 1,000 members of staff. In December 2021, it was announced that the rolling stock for the HS2 line, would be a joint venture between Hitachi and Alstom. __TOC__ History In 2007, the Department for Transport (DfT) in the United Kingdom decided to procure new trains to replace the Inte ...
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Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gloucester and other principal towns and villages include Cheltenham, Cirencester, Kingswood, Bradley Stoke, Stroud, Thornbury, Yate, Tewkesbury, Bishop's Cleeve, Churchdown, Brockworth, Winchcombe, Dursley, Cam, Berkeley, Wotton-under-Edge, Tetbury, Moreton-in-Marsh, Fairford, Lechlade, Northleach, Stow-on-the-Wold, Chipping Campden, Bourton-on-the-Water, Stonehouse, Nailsworth, Minchinhampton, Painswick, Winterbourne, Frampton Cotterell, Coleford, Cinderford, Lydney and Rodborough and Cainscross that are within Stroud's urban area. Gloucestershire borders Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire to the east, Wiltshire to the south, Bristol and Somerset ...
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Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire ( ; cy, Sir Benfro ) is a county in the south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and the rest by sea. The county is home to Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. The Park occupies more than a third of the area of the county and includes the Preseli Hills in the north as well as the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. Historically, mining and fishing were important activities, while industry nowadays is focused on agriculture (86 per cent of land use), oil and gas, and tourism; Pembrokeshire's beaches have won many awards. The county has a diverse geography with a wide range of geological features, habitats and wildlife. Its prehistory and modern history have been extensively studied, from tribal occupation, through Roman times, to Welsh, Irish, Norman, English, Scandinavian and Flemish influences. Pembrokeshire County Council's headquarters are in the county town of Haverfordwest. The council has a majority of In ...
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SNCF
The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (; abbreviated as SNCF ; French for "National society of French railroads") is France's national state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the country's national rail traffic along with Monaco, including the TGV, on France's high-speed rail network. Its functions include operation of railway services for passengers and freight (through its subsidiaries SNCF Voyageurs and Rail Logistics Europe), as well as maintenance and signalling of rail infrastructure ( SNCF Réseau). The railway network consists of about of route, of which are high-speed lines and electrified. About 14,000 trains are operated daily. In 2010 the SNCF was ranked 22nd in France and 214th globally on the Fortune Global 500 list. It is the main business of the SNCF Group, which in 2020 had €30 billion of sales in 120 countries. The SNCF Group employs more than 275,000 employees in France and around the world. Since July 2013, the SNCF Gro ...
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Deutsche Bahn
The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the second-largest transport company in the world, after the German postal and logistics company / DHL, and is the largest railway operator and infrastructure owner in Europe. Deutsche Bahn was the largest railway company in the world by revenue in 2015; in 2019, DB Passenger transport companies carried around 4.8 billion passengers, and DB logistics companies transported approximately 232 million tons of goods in rail freight transport. The group is divided into several companies, including '' DB Fernverkehr'' (long-distance passenger), '' DB Regio'' (local passenger services) and '' DB Cargo'' (rail freight). The Group subsidiary '' DB Netz'' also operates large parts of the German railway infrastructure, making it the largest rail networ ...
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A465 Road
The A465 is a trunk road that runs from Bromyard in Herefordshire, England to Llandarcy near Swansea in South Wales. The western half is known officially as the Neath to Abergavenny Trunk Road, but the section from Abergavenny to the Vale of Neath is more commonly referred to as the Heads of the Valleys Road because it links the northern heads of the South Wales Valleys. Approximately following the southern boundary of the Brecon Beacons National Park, the Ordnance Survey ''Pathfinder'' guide describes it as the unofficial border between rural and industrial South Wales. The A465 provides an alternative route between England and the counties in South West Wales and to the ferries to Ireland. Route The A465 runs south-west from Bromyard towards the River Lugg, from where it runs concurrently with the A4103 for a short distance before entering Hereford. After a short distance on the A49, it crosses the River Wye, the River Monnow and the border into Wales. The A465 meets th ...
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Derby Litchurch Lane Works
Derby Litchurch Lane Works (formerly Derby Carriage and Wagon Works) is a railway rolling stock factory in Derby, England. It was opened in the 19th century by the Midland Railway. The plant has produced rolling stock under the ownership of the Midland Railway. It is now owned by Alstom. History Midland Railway (1876–1923) Railway building began at Derby Works in 1840, when the North Midland Railway, the Midland Counties Railway and the Birmingham and Derby Railway set up engine sheds as part of their Tri Junct Station. When the three merged in 1844 to form the Midland Railway its first Locomotive and Carriage Superintendent Matthew Kirtley set out to organise their activities and persuaded the directors to build their own rolling stock, rather than buying it in (see Derby Works). By the 1860s the works had expanded to such an extent that he was considering reorganising it and, in 1873, it separated into the Midland Railway Locomotive Works, known locally as "The Loco", ...
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Newton Aycliffe
Newton Aycliffe is a town in County Durham, England. Founded in 1947 under the New Towns Act of 1946, the town sits about five miles to the north of Darlington and ten miles to the south of Durham. It is the oldest new town in the north of England. Together with the bordering Aycliffe Village (to the south) and the north part of School Aycliffe (to the west), it forms the civil parish of Great Aycliffe. The population of the town at the time of the 2011 census was 26,633. History Anglo-Saxons Prior to the Newtown development, Aycliffe (originally 'Acley') was the site of an Anglo-Saxon settlement. The name Acley came from the Old English words: 'Ac', meaning oak, and 'ley', meaning 'a clearing'. Aycliffe was the location of a church synods in AD 782 and AD 789. Another old name was 'Yacley'. The town's motto is Latin for "Not the Least, but the Greatest we seek". Transport On the edge of the town is the Bishop Auckland to Darlington railway branch line which is part of th ...
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Neath Port Talbot
Neath Port Talbot ( cy, Castell-nedd Port Talbot) is a county borough in the south-west of Wales. Its principal towns are Neath, Port Talbot, Briton Ferry and Pontardawe. The county borough borders Bridgend County Borough and Rhondda Cynon Taf to the east, Powys and Carmarthenshire to the north; and Swansea to the west. Neath Port Talbot is the eighth-most populous local authority area in Wales and the third most populous county borough. The population at the 2011 census was 139,812. The population in the coastal areas is mainly English-speaking, whereas in the valleys in the north of the borough there are many who are Welsh-speaking. Geography The local authority area stretches from the coast to the border of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The majority of the land is upland or semi-upland and 43% is covered by forestry with major conifer plantations in upland areas. Most of the lower-lying flat land is near the coast around Port Talbot. An extensive dune system stretc ...
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Pas-de-Calais
Pas-de-Calais (, "strait of Calais"; pcd, Pas-Calés; also nl, Nauw van Kales) is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. It has the most communes of all the departments of France, 890, and is the 8th most populous. It had a population of 1,465,278 in 2019.Populations légales 2019: 62 Pas-de-Calais
INSEE
The Calais Passage connects to the Port of Calais on the . Pas-de-Calais borders the departments of