A new ‘golden age’?
VISITING CAF’s new factory in Newport recently brought home how the fortunes of train building in Britain have changed in recent years. At one time not too long ago there was essentially just Bombardier in Derby for new builds, plus Brush and Wabtec for re-engineering existing locomotives and units.
Now, thanks to massive new orders from the franchised train operators, some of the world’s biggest train building firms also have factories here – including the likes of Hitachi, CAF and Alstom, while Siemens has plans to build a significant site in Goole and Talgo another in Scotland.
Critics say these are not true train building factories, not like the British Rail workshops of old, and to some extent that is true. These modern plants are assembly lines where components made elsewhere are put together to make the final product. But this is the modern way, it is how cars are also produced for example, and no one should expect every last nut and bolt to be forged on site anymore.
These factories represent significant investments by their parent companies, not just in land and buildings, but in people and skills too. They would not do that if the idea was to simply fulfil an order and disappear again a year or so later.
There may well be peaks and troughs in demand, not least because we are heading towards the end of a vast number of newbuilds entering service on the network. But the modern way is to have ‘build and maintain’ contracts, where the factories that assembled trains become the centres of future heavy maintenance – often over the lifetime of the fleet.
Moreover, with the goal for the country to become carbon-neutral in the future, the railway’s contribution to this will include further electrification, requiring more EMUs to replace the still plentiful DMUs – not to mention the fleet of inter-city trains that will be needed for HS2.
All of which adds up to a very positive time for the railway industry, which will surely come to be seen by future historians as another ‘golden age’.