November 2025
As a token of their gratitude for this contribution, Alstom very kindly invited us for an exclusive tour of the Works to see these panels in situ, as well as giving us a sneek-peek of their current production line for new Elizabeth Line trains. This was a true honour as the logistics of allowing an outside group such as ourselves onto an understandably highly safety-senstive site are significant – and so are usually politely declined.
Thus a group of 15 of us assembled (fortunately on the one sunny afternoon of that week) and were introduced to the site by Kathryn Lancaster, Alstom’s Communications Manager for UK & Ireland, along with our very own Andy Boothman — both of whom had been at the epicentre of The Greatest Gathering and central to our own involvement in it all. After our safety briefing we set off on the “history trail” around the site, seeing just how much of Thomas Gethin Clayton’s original 1876 Works survive and gaining an appreciation of the genius of it configuration.
Andy Boothman is telling the Midland Railway Society tour group about the Litchurch Lane Works Manager’s Office as we inspect the associated history panel.
Materials came into the front of the Works along the short “Litchurch Branch” from London Road Junction, and — eventually — finished vehicles emerged from the back, resplendent in their Crimson Lake and multiple coats of varnish (well, passenger stock). As far as those materials go, throughout the Midland Railway period, and well into the LMS, this was almost entirely timber. Unfathomable quantities of trees arrived, to be dried, seasoned and sawn before becoming underframes, panels, roofs, doors and so on. That was along the right hand side of the Works as viewed from the front. On left, the various metals required for wheels, axles, bearings, fitting, nuts, bolts, screws and so one were forged, cast, beaten and machined. All these components were united in the erecting shop for new builds (wagons as well as carriages), while alongside, existing vehicles were arriving for repair and refurbishment. Separately, seats were being sewn and stuffed, windows glazed and everything thoroughly tested before the vehicles entered or returned to traffic.
So it was all the more remarkable to be taken into what has been known as U Shop for around a century, or rather what the Midland Railway called the New Lifting Shop when it was built in 1910 and to be shown what is going on in there. It goes without saying that the materials, the tools & equipment (and even how the former are issued to the workers) and, most of all, the vehicles at the end of the process, would be completely unrecognisable were a Midland employee to be somehow transported forward in time to today. What is unmistakeable however, is that such a person would immediately realise that what they called a Progressive system — a vehicle being worked on in stages, then moved along the line to emerge at the end — was being carried out in exactly the same place as they had been doing since 1910 (and even before, in the original Lifting shop).
The Society stand had been located in U Shop during the Greatest Gathering and so some of us had experienced first hand its cavernous interior. That it amply accommodates a technologically cutting edge 21st Century manufacturing line — the modern overhead cranes working on the original 1910 gantry! — speaks so highly of the MR’’s foresight in ensuring they would not have to expand the facility a third time.
It is undeniable that the Works are not nearly as busy as they once were, but we need not go into the reasons for that here. On our showing, however, it was apparent there is still quite a lot of work going on across the site on a typical Thursday — over and above the Elizabeth Line production. We viewed the plaque marking the site of a Zeppelin bomb in 1916 and Remembered the railwaymen killed in that raid.
What we were there to see, however, were the ghosts. The echoes of a former age which are to be seen everywhere. Only the Carriage Erecting Shop of the seven main buildings which formed the core of Clayton’s original design, has been lost (well, a corner of the old Fitting Shop, but that’s another story!). These, as well as the later additions, bear innumerable marks and scars of generations of change. Victorian door fittings and cast iron remain prolific, and even bricked up entrances and window apertures tel their own story. The complex network of rails required to get vehicles in and out, as well as the traversing tables which facilitated such a (relatively!) compact site remain in situ. Many clearly have not carried a rail vehicle in living memory (except that most did during the aforementioned Greatest Gathering!), but they nevertheless shout of different times when a squadron of “Jockos” would be squealing, hissing and tooting their way back and forth throughout the working week. That. — is what we were there for!
The Midland Railway Society tour of Alstom UK’s Litchurch Lane Works on Thursday 13th November 2025. On the left is Matt Smith, Head of Production, who conducted us on a hugely informative and comprehensive tour of the Elizabeth Line production process, which can be seen as the backdrop. Continuing from the left we have; Graham Speechley, Paul Walpole, Joe Boal, Brian Palmer, Kevin Lock, Martin Randle, Adrian Tester, Dave Harris, Richard Gretton, Adrian Howe, Alex Hayward, James Allen, Jan Gough (Derby Museums), Andy Boothman and Will Ross. The photograph was kindly taken by Kathryn Lancaster.
