It has been announced that major transport company Alstom is preparing to invest £1.3 million in its operations in the north-west.

It will spend £300,000 on its existing train care depot in Preston, as well as constructing a £1 million warehouse for its Longsight Traincare Centre in Manchester. The investment is aimed at improving the company’s logistics and distribution infrastructure, according to Rob Whyte, managing director of regional, intercity and services.

The decision has been taken ahead of a major heavy engineering overhaul of Virgin’s Pendolino tilting trains, which the company maintains.

This is the fourth time the fleet has required en-masse engineering work of this nature, and the process will involve changing over a million parts throughout the course of the job. However, new technologies such as automated component searching will help significantly speed up the process, which is expected to take about 18 months.