DE1, DE21 to DE24 and DE73 · Derby
Data recovery for Derby. Ten trains, 47,700 screws in each; the traceability pack outlives the build.
Litchurch Lane has been assembling trains since 1876. It is the last factory left in the country capable of designing, engineering, manufacturing and testing one from scratch. It is Alstom now, formerly Bombardier, and it is currently building ten Class 345 Aventras for the Elizabeth line. The first of them (345071) came off the line on 4 June 2026. Every nine-carriage set carries five miles of welding, fifty miles of cabling, more than 47,700 screws and 31,700 bolts, and behind each of those sits a weld log, a torque record or an inspection photograph. All of these records need to outlast thirty years of service. Nearly forty supplier companies and more than a thousand people feed the works. Most of those suppliers are far too small to run their own IT departments. The pattern repeats on both sides of them. Rolls-Royce has three separate businesses in Derby, including the submarine reactor work at Raynesway. That site is growing by over 100,000 square metres and 1,170 skilled jobs. Toyota has built at Burnaston since 1992. And Marketing Derby counts 11,000 skilled rail employees within Derby itself. There is no counter here and no collection service. Get a quote first. Then send your drive by tracked post to the Manchester intake lab; you are never charged for us to look at it, and the figure is settled in writing before anything chargeable happens.
Ask an engineer and the first look is free
0115 8220606
The Derby postbag.
Not yours? Open the fault finder →| What is happening | What brings it in | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| An engineer's laptop that stops at the maker's logo | CAD assemblies and test-cell output kept on the local disk | Take the drive out and post that by itself |
| A supplier's office server that stopped mid-week | Weld logs, torque records and inspection photography: the prime will ask for these | Turn it off, label each disk with its bay number and post them bare |
| Every screen in the office showing a ransom note | The backup was writing to a share on the same network | Photograph the ransom note, disconnect the network, leave the power on |
| A production drive out of a 3,500-seat venue | Camera media and ticketing exports from a room that hosts 200 events a year | Stop using it the moment it begins to click |
| A body-shop measuring PC that will not start | Press-tool data and production quality records, with no second copy | Send the disk; the rig stays exactly where it is |
Packing it up in Derby.
Questions we get from Derby.
Is the whole of Derby covered, DE73 and Burnaston included?
It is: DE1, DE3, DE21 to DE24, DE73 and the Derbyshire villages beyond those. As nothing is collected by road, your address has no bearing on either your place in the queue or the price. Once you have a quote, media travels to us by tracked, fully insured post. Whatever arrives is examined the same day at no charge, and we pay the return postage.
A second disk has just dropped out of our RAID. What now?
Remove the power and do not turn it on again. What must be avoided is a controller rebuild: writing to an array that was already failing turns a recoverable set into one that cannot be recovered. Number each carrier with its bay, leave the chassis as it is, get a quote and post the disks on their own. Each will be imaged individually before any reassembly is attempted. All multi-disk work starts at £500 + VAT.
Our whole configuration pack sat on one office PC. Can it come back?
Usually. As-built records, gauging surveys, commissioning logs and the drawings behind them, on a machine no one ever backed up, with a customer waiting on the pack: that is just a typical week around here. Undo the four screws, leave the tower where it is and send only the drive. One drive is £300 + VAT, agreed in writing before any chargeable work.
Will anybody come out to Derby to collect it?
No. No one is sent out, and no one ever has been. That is part of why the prices can be published. Get a quote, and a tracked, insured parcel will reach the bench faster than a driver would. Drop-offs are taken only at the Manchester intake lab, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, with no appointment needed. If it is an awkward shape, ring 0115 8220606 first and we will sort out the packing with you on the call.
What Derby usually asks about next.
Next door to Derby, on the same terms
Get a quote, post it from Derby, and the bench starts the day it lands.
Switch it off completely and leave it off; each time you switch it back on, a little more is lost. Before you post anything, ask for a quote and tell us exactly what it was doing when it stopped working. It costs nothing for us to look at it; one figure follows in writing, and you agree to it before any chargeable work begins.