Ironbridge light railway interview with Tim Burleigh.
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00:00 Hi, I'm David Stubbings from Shropshire Star and I'm here with Tim Burley, Head of External Relations at Ever Sholt Railway.
00:10 We are on the Ironbridge Power Station site where we are trying out probably what you could describe as Shropshire's most secret train.
00:19 It's a new project, testing, it's called the Revolution VLR, Very Light Rail, and we're going to talk to Tim a little bit about it and what it can do and how it could, and is designed to transform rural rail travel in the future.
00:38 So, Tim, tell us a little bit about the Revolution VLR.
00:45 The role of the Revolution really is to extend the outreach of the railway, principally helping to achieve modal shift from road to rail, which we all know is needed for the UK to meet its climate change obligations.
01:08 And it's really a vehicle that is optimised for relatively short operations on segregated branch lines that run into mainline railways.
01:24 We see it very much as a component of a joined-up public transport system that could, for example, have buses or coaches at one end, then travelling on Revolution, then travelling on a mainline railway, with everything integrated and timed so it makes for a convenient and fuss-free journey.
01:49 And that connectivity is really important, and it's driven a lot of the features of the vehicle.
01:55 So, you know, we've been influenced by the high-quality passenger environment that you see in modern buses and coaches, as well as in mainline rail vehicles.
02:08 So it has USB connectivity at each row of seats, it has an ethernet backbone so Wi-Fi is provided, it has air conditioning, and as you commented earlier, David, it's got very comfortable seats.
02:28 Because we want it to be a special experience for passengers, we want them to use the railway.
02:36 So, if you talk about the seating and that, you talk about how the passenger experience is very important, and can you give an example of how that would work for all types of passengers in terms of if they've got luggage?
02:54 Well, again, we've aimed very much at providing flexibility. So the seating, and this demonstrates as 56 seats, plus a wheelchair space, as required by the accessibility regulations.
03:13 We've made sure that there's plenty of legroom. That's important because, again, passengers want to feel comfortable.
03:22 They also want, for short journeys, typically to have rucksacks and bags handy by their feet, and you've got to give them space to do that.
03:33 We can alter the seating layout. We're sitting at the centre section, which is what we call bay seating, with a central table, which is ideal for a family group.
03:45 The remainder is what we call airline seating in conventional rows, but again with ample legroom.
03:55 And we can change the number of seats because we recognise from the stakeholder feedback that people may want more dedicated luggage space.
04:05 If, for example, it's a shuttle to an airport, for tourist destinations, may want more cycle space.
04:14 Inevitably, there's a trade-off that within a fixed vehicle size, if you have more space for cycles or luggage, you'll have slightly fewer seats.
04:26 But that's an operator's choice, and as a long-term vehicle owner, Epsholt Rail recognises that similar trains quite often have different internal layouts,
04:40 and the ease of reconfiguration if a train moves from one route to another is really important to us.
04:47 And, just to find out, this train's been here for, sort of coming up to two and a half years really.
04:54 I mean, what's, it's gone through a lot of testing, there's been a lot of user groups trying it and just giving feedback.
05:00 What's the next stage in the process?
05:05 Kate, you're absolutely right. We've had over 450 stakeholders, international, national, regional, transport authorities and operators and so on, here so far.
05:19 And we've learned an awful lot from that.
05:22 And that's informed our plans for the next phase, which is to build three further brand new revolution vehicles,
05:32 based on this design and building upon the experience gained.
05:37 But rather than them being a diesel battery hybrid, as this one is, they will be all battery operations,
05:45 so zero emissions operation at all times, integrated with rapid line side recharging of the batteries to make sure that the propulsion system remains reliable and full performance.
06:03 And those will start their trials in 2026.
06:09 Great.