In December 2019, Avanti West Coast placed an order for 13 five-car bi-mode units to replace its Class 221 fleet, along with 10 Class 807 electric units, as part of £350million contract with Hitachi Rail.[10] All were originally scheduled to be in service by 2023. Financing of this rolling stock was handled by Rock Rail West Coast, a joint venture between Rock Rail and Standard Life Aberdeen.[11]
The trains will be maintained by a joint team of Alstom and Hitachi staff, alongside the Class 807, at Oxley depot near Wolverhampton.
Passenger facilities promised include free Wi-Fi, at-seat wireless inductive charging for electronic devices, 230V sockets and USB sockets, a catering offer and a real-time passenger information system that can advise of connecting rail services.[12]
In June 2022, static testing commenced at Newton Aycliffe and dynamic testing followed in November.[13][14] Main line testing of the Class 805 commenced in February 2023,[15] while the type's introduction into service originally planned for later that same year.[16] However, this was put back to Summer 2024.[17] On 2 June 2024, the Class 805 entered regular service.[1]
In August 2024, the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) issued an improvement notice to Avanti West Coast regarding the operation of the newly-introduced Class 805 fleet, having determined its lack of an automatic speed supervision system (which was present on the preceding Class 221 fleet) to be in breach of legislation. Compliance with the improvement notice would require all Class 805s to be retrofitted with some manner of continuous speed supervision; if this functionality necessitates the installation of additional hardware, such work could be quite costly to impliment. In response, Avanti West Coast filed an appeal against the improvement notice.[18]
The Class 805 replaces the diesel-only Class 221 Voyager trains on the West Coast route. The Voyagers finished service in December 2024, and were transferred to CrossCountry.[19]
