Comment
We need a big confidence booster… and quick
WELCOME to the 1,000th issue of RAIL. It’s a privilege to have had your company for 43 years.
As we enter 2024, we will be learning more and more about a train-building industry that is wracked with uncertainty, and wondering whether the Government is really behind expanding rail travel.
Hopefully, we can all be inspired by the contributions in this special anniversary issue from some of the most learned and experienced industry figures, spanning four decades. We all recognise that large-scale investment is being made, but much of it may sadly be too late to stop the collapse of highly skilled and competent manufacturers.
More on this soon. First, the business of the day. The old year was only hours from its close when news broke that Japanese investor Mitsubishi HC Capital wants to withdraw its £475 million holdings in High Speed 1 and East Midlands Railway, because of what it regards as uncertainly in the market.
Who will fill the financial chasm? Will the proposed auction of the shares attract sufficient worthwhile interest? Will the Government have to fill some of the gap with more taxpayers’ money, and/or will savings be demanded from other projects?
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has signed off a 4.9% increase in regulated fares. It covers season tickets, and some off-peak and flexible tickets.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper’s spin is that it “strikes a fair balance between what is needed to keep the railways running, while not overburdening passengers”.
But that may not please the likes of Network Rail and Transport for London, which are concerned that nowhere near enough funding will be available to carry out their essential work programmes, let alone make enhancements.
Is it a sinister return to 1981 (the year of our first issue), when someone in cash-strapped British Rail was about to coin the term ‘maintenance holiday’, to turn the bad news that essential infrastructure repairs might have to be deliberately cancelled or postponed into something more palatable?
Nowhere is the continued lack of strategic planning being felt more than in Derby, which only nine months ago was celebrating being chosen to become the base of Great British Railways.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, the legislation to make this happen has still not passed through the House of Commons.
Exactly a mile away, we could see the end of manufacturing at Alstom’s Litchurch Lane factory in the coming weeks, after 184 years, because it has practically run out of work.
Some had hoped that the takeover of the Bombardier assembly plant in 2021 might bring some hope of assembling trains for overseas, but nothing substantial has materialised. And spare a thought for smaller firms entirely dependent on Derby w
