Laira Traction and Rolling Stock Maintenance Depot

Train maintenance facility in South West England

Laira Traction and Rolling Stock Maintenance Depot is a railway traction maintenance depot situated in Plymouth, Devon, England. The depot is operated by Great Western Railway (GWR) and is where their fleet of High Speed Trains are overhauled along with those belonging to CrossCountry. These will be withdrawn in 2023 but it will then become the principal depot for GWR's InterCity Express Trains. Other trains visit for daily servicing. After sixty years as a steam depot, servicing locomotives used on the Exeter to Plymouth line that runs past the shed as well as local lines, diesels started to arrive in 1958. A diesel depot opened in 1962 and was expanded in 1981 to accommodate the High Speed Trains. The depot code 'LA' is used to identify rolling stock based there.

Laira was the location of the temporary terminus of the South Devon Railway from 5 May 1848 when a small engine shed would have been provided. With the completion of the line to Plymouth Millbay railway station on 2 April 1849 a new shed was provided there and the facilities at Laira dismantled, although it remained a junction for the branch line to Sutton Harbour which was mixed gauge for the use of the Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway. The Great Western Railway, which had amalgamated with the South Devon Railway on 1 February 1876, a new engine shed opened at Laira in 1901 on a site inside a triangle of lines formed by the main line, Sutton Harbour branch, and a curve that was mainly used by London and South Western Railway trains to reach their terminus at Plymouth Friary. A sewerage treatment facility and poor ground conditions constrained the site of the shed to the north west corner of the triangle (near Lipson Junction) It was adjacent to the Embankment Road with the estuary of the River Plym just the other side of the road. The shed was a 56.39 m brick roundhouse with a 19.81 m turntable in the middle. 28 lines radiated from the turntable, one for access and the remainder for stabling locomotives. Loocmotives approached from the east (Laira Junction) passing a coaling stage. A small railway station known as Laira Halt was opened on the adjacent main line on 1 June 1904 but closed again on 7 July 1930. Initially Laira was only used for goods locomotives but after the passenger locomotive shed at Millbay closed in 1924 it became very crowded. In 1931 a new 64.01 m long and 20.42 m wide shed with four tracks was brought into use just south of the original roundhouse, funded by a government loan under the Development (Loan Guarantees and Grants) Act 1929. This became known as the 'Long Shed' or 'New Shed'. At the same time additional sidings were laid near the coaling stage (which was doubled in length) and a second track connected to give a separate exit route from the roundhouse. The new shed was built over part of the area previously used by the sewerage treatment facility. A new line connected Laira Junction with Mount Gould Junction (the southern point of the triangle of lines surrounding the shed. This line became known as the 'Speedway' and allowed locomotives to turn on the triangle rather than on the turntable inside the roundhouse. During World War II a covered extension was added on the south side of the coaling stage to give an additional place to refuel locomotives.

Warship Class diesel hydraulic locomotives started to appear in 1958 and were at first accommodated in the Long Shed alongside steam locomotives until the diesel maintenance depot had been finished. Laira was designed for the servicing and heavy maintenance of the diesel hydraulic locomotives favoured by the Western Region of British Railways, the first of the region's purpose designed large diesel depots. It also handled the local diesel electric shunter and DMU fleets, although servicing of the latter was done initially at Belmont sidings at Millbay. This area was later modernised and fenced off in readiness for servicing the Nightstar Channel Tunnel sleeper coaches, but the proposed service from Plymouth to Paris Gare du Nord never materialised. CrossCountry will withdraw its Class 43s by October 2023 when their lease ends. Great Western Railway has started to reduce the number of its Class 43 powered services in December 2022 with the aim of withdrawing most of them by December 2023. The space freed will allow them to move the maintenance of all their Class 802s to Laira.