A lack of rolling stock orders could mean the closure of Bombardier’s Derby plant
and the end of train building in the UK. The root of the problem is not Siemens’ victory in the Thameslink tender, but the DfT’s chaotic rolling stock ordering policy, says Robert Wright
End of the line? A
nyone with a sincere interest in the health of the British railways will feel a pang over the fate of Bombardier’s Litchurch Lane factory, the UK’s last full trainmaking facility. Bombardier announced on 5 July that it planned to make redundant around 1,400 of the roughly 3,000 staff currently
working at the plant, 446 of them permanent staff and 983 on short- term contracts. There has to be a real fear that the decision about the plant – which only narrowly escaped closure during Bombardier’s Europe-wide reorganisation in 2004 – marks the start of the last chapter in Britain’s 200-year trainmaking history. Yet, while British policy towards trainmakers has been hopelessly muddled, thinking about the alternatives has been no clearer. The
central – almost unexamined – contention is that, in continental Europe, orders are handled more cunningly, so that national trainmaking industries are protected and work is not allowed to leak abroad. But continental Europe’s rolling stock markets, which
undoubtedly remain far more protected than Britain’s, are not obviously providing train operators, passengers or taxpayers with a better deal. Anyone who thinks otherwise would have been disabused at a Financial Times forum I chaired in June in Berlin. At the Hitachi-sponsored event, Volker Kefer, Deutsche Bahn’s director for technology, reiterated long-standing complaints about the quality of product it receives from DB’s suppliers, which build all their trains in Germany. Train reliability in the last, harsh winter in Germany
Finishing touches are added to rolling stock for London Underground at Litchurch Lane
PAGE 16 AUGUST 2011
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