The contract includes the maintenance of 22 six-car Metropolis trains, Australia’s first fully-automated passenger rail vehicles, Alstom’s Urbalis 400 communications-based train control (CBTC) signalling systems, point machines, operation and maintenance of the depot and the cleaning of the trains.

More than 50 full-time staff, of which 5% will be apprentices, will maintain the system which will use Alstom’s HealthHub maintenance platform which it says will provide condition-based predictive maintenance.

Alstom says HealthHub is supported by various high-technology data capture solutions including TrainScanner, Track Tracer and Catenary Tracer - an automated diagnostics portal capable of measuring in real-time the condition of the maintained assets.

Mobilisation of the Alstom teams is expected to start mid-2018 with the project fully operational in the first half of 2019.