It would be produced by what he claimed was a "British-led consortium" (yeah, led by Japanese company Hitachi. The clue is in the name, Gordon. Still, "British jobs for British workers", eh?).
What was a simple project to replace a much-loved train was mismanaged by the Department for Transport (or DaFT) to become a bloated and ludicrous "one train fits all" solution to every rolling stock problem currently faced in Britain, with the possible exception of two-coach diesel multiple units on rural branch lines.
A Government-commissioned review reported earlier this year that it was a wasteful and unaffordable project, most of the benefits of which could be delivered for a fraction of the cost and with a less risky set of solutions.
The new Secretary of State welcomed the report but left what in retrospect we should have seen was a heavy hint -- that Hitachi was to be praised for their commitment to the project and their innovative approach to financing it.
A huge announcement is expected this week (Wednesday, in fact), covering the fate of the Super Express Train, electrification of the Great Western Mainline and assorted other projects in the north-west, orders for around 1,000 new rail carriages, the future of the massive Thameslink upgrade project, and a few other bits and bobs.
Idle gossip is now suggesting that the Super Express Train may not, after all, be dead, and that Hitachi has managed to re-engineer its offer to make it affordable and simpler.
The problem is that Bombardier and Siemens are now huffing in the wings that the revised Super Express Train is so very different from what was tendered that a new call for tenders should be offered. One which did not have as a major part of its specification the Frankenstein's monster that was the Hybrid Train:
It's a litigious time in the railways (the French manufacturer of high speed trains, Alsthom, has just taken Eurostar to the High Court to demand an injunction to prevent them from awarding a contract to the German manufacturer of high speed trains, Siemens. They lost).
More important than any of this will be whether or not the government remains committed to the massively ambitious rolling programme of mainline electrification announced by the saintly former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, before he was booted out of office.
Rolling stock lasts for a couple or three decades, but electrification is forever and that's the real prize here.
1 comment:
Well, Wednesday is almost over and there's no sign of that huge announcement (though, in fairness to me, a specialist journal was predicting over the weekend that the announcement would "definitely" be on Tuesday).
Maybe tomorrow, then.
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