It will be one of five which are being built across the country to look after the new fleet which will replace ageing high-speed services on the East Coast main line.

The Government says the new train building programme will help to create and preserve jobs across the UK.

The new trains will be serviced, maintained and cleaned at the new Leeds depot.

It has not yet been revealed where it will be built or how many jobs will be created locally.

A consortium – Agility Trains – is the preferred bidder for the £7.5 billion contract to build and maintain the new Super Express trains.

The first will enter service on the East Coast main line in 2013 with a full service from 2015.

They are expected to cut the Leeds to London journey time by 10 minutes and will replace the Intercity 125 High Speed Train (HST) diesel fleet and Intercity 225 electric fleet introduced by British Rail during the 1970s and 1980s.

They will be cleaner, greener and quieter than their predecessors.
Agility brings together UK construction firm, John Laing, with Japanese industrial and electronics giant Hitachi and the private equity arm of banking group Barclays.

Hitachi builds Japan's famous "bullet" trains.

A new train manufacturing plant will be built in the UK, possibly at Sheffield.

As well as Leeds, maintenance depots will be built in Doncaster, Bristol, Reading and west London.

A number of existing depots will also be upgraded.

Transport Minister, Geoff Hoon, said the project would create or safeguard some 12,500 manufacturing jobs in total.

East Coast main line franchise holder National Express welcomed the news.

A spokesman said: "The new trains will create additional capacity and deliver reduced journey times, as well as offering all of the comfort, customer facilities and technical advances associated with a brand new design.

But the news sparked an angry backlash from Britain's largest rail trade union, the RMT, when it emerged some of the train building work will be carried out in Japan.

The Department for Transport was forced to concede that not all the jobs, and not all the value generated by the contract, would be based in Britain.

Chief executive of Agility Trains, Alistair Dormer,
confirmed that the first 70 carriages would be constructed in Japan, with the bulk of the manufacturing and assembly then transferring to the UK.