British rolling stock market enters a lull

The post-privatisation train building gold rush in the UK is over. Rolling stock manufacturers face a lean time over the next few years.

Privatisation of the British railway industry has not eased the boom-and-bust nature of the rolling stock supply sector. If anything, it has made it worse. A boom in building over the past decade, as the private sector train operators renewed their train fleets, is now being followed by a lull in orders.

Governmental action has not helped in smoothing out the peaked nature of the orders in recent years. Commuting flows into London are heavy from the south side of the British capital, and the large fleet of trains deployed to handle this traffic comprised Mk 1 standard stock from the 1960s, with slam doors. The crashworthiness of this stock was lower than that of modern stock and the slam doors posed a potential safety hazard at stations. For these reasons the Government required the industry to introduce an accelerated programme of Mk 1 withdrawal, with all the old trains to be gone by the end of November 2005.

Many observers questioned the need for such rapid withdrawal, as all the old trains were fitted at some expense two or three years ago with a Train Protection & Warning System, a mechanism that guards against trains going through red lights, thus reducing the risk of a crash. Nevertheless, the industry pressed on with the withdrawal programme and the target was achieved ahead of time, with the last Mk 1 train in standard service leaving Cannon Street station in London on 7 October.

Large orders were placed for new trains to facilitate the Mk 1 withdrawal programme: Siemens built 665 Desiro vehicles for South West Trains in Germany, while Bombardier Derby, UK, made 618 Electrostar vehicles for South Eastern Trains and 700 for Southern Railway. The building programme was accelerated in order to meet the Mk 1 withdrawal deadline, which resulted in high fluctuations in employment. At Derby, where Electrostar production for SET and Southern has made up the bulk of the workload in recent years, the new build sector of the Bombardier factory has gone from almost one thousand people eighteen months ago at the peak of Electrostar production to just 60 now.

Desiros for TransPennine

With the Mk 1 replacement programme complete, the UK rolling stock market is reduced to a few straggling orders from the great post-privatisation boom. At Krefeld-Uerdingen near Dusseldorf, Siemens is building 153 diesel Desiro vehicles for Keolis / First TransPennine Express, the operator of inter-city services that link cities such as Liverpool and Manchester on the western side of northern England with others on the eastern side, such as Leeds and Newcastle.

The first four sets of the new three-car Class 185 Desiros were on test at Siemens’ Wildenrath facility in the autumn, with the first unit for UK testing due to be delivered at the end of November. The 51 sets, leased through HSBC, feature 23m coaches. All coaches are powered by a 560kW (750hp) Cummins QSK19 engine, and maximum service speed is 160km/h. Each set has seating for 181 passengers with 154 Standard, 15 First Class and 12 tip-up seats. The trains are equipped with onboard closed circuit television and a passenger information system triggered by GPS (global positioning system).

New build at Derby

Bombardier’s new build operation at Derby has just picked up an order for six Turbostar DMU vehicles for Chiltern Railways; to augment a large Turbostar fleet delivered to Chiltern in past years. This operator has published a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union requesting tenders for the supply of a further 60 vehicles (probably 15×4-car trains). The operator may take over some local services around Birmingham with the break-up of the Central Trains franchise announced by the Government in October 2005; the extra vehicles would supplement the fleet to make this possible.

Underground build in prospect

The limited orders will help to sustain the Derby factory during the current drought of orders until 2008, when work significantly increases for a cars order for the London Underground network. Bombardier is part of the Metronet consortium, which has the concession to modernise two thirds of the London Underground Ltd (LUL) network. This participation in the Public Private Partnership programme for the Underground has paid off with an order for 1,738 vehicles for Metronet, for delivery over the period 2008-15.

This is one of the largest rolling stock orders ever placed and has been a key factor in helping to secure Derby’s future in the recent round of plant closures announced by Bombardier. The factory is currently building two pre-production trains for the Victoria Line, which will be thoroughly tested before work begins in earnest on the main batch of 47x8car trains (376 cars) for this route. The Victoria Line stock will be followed by new trains for LUL’s sub-surface network, covering the Metropolitan, Circle, District and Hammersmith & City Lines.

Also for the London Underground network, but in this case for the Tube Lines PPP consortium, Alstom has been building new trains for the Jubilee Line. The order comprises 59 trailer cars for lengthening all the trains on the line to seven cars, plus 4×7-car new sets for the route. The Jubilee Line serves Stratford in east London, which is at the heart of the site for the Olympic Games in 2012; extra capacity on the route will be useful over the Games fortnight.

The seventh-car lengthening project will be carried out over the Christmas 2005 period, using the new cars that Alstom has built at its factory in Barcelona, Spain.

Hitachi trains are coming!

A newcomer to the British railway scene is Hitachi of Japan, which has picked up an order for 28×6-car (168 vehicles) for domestic services on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the new high-speed line linking London with the Continent. The forthcoming 225km/h Hitachi A-trains will be complicated to build, as they have to be able to operate both at high speeds on the 25kV overhead new line, and at lower speeds on the historic 750V DC third rail network in Kent. The new trains are intended to enter service with the December 2009 timetable change.

Awaiting the HST2

All eyes in the British rolling stock industry now are on HST2, the replacement train for the diesel InterCity 125 High Speed Train at work on the East Coast, Great Western and Midland main lines out of London. Built in the 1970s, these trains were the saviours of British Rail’s inter-city business.

The Government has decided against rushing the procurement of new trains and intends to get the specification right before going out to tender. The veteran IC125s will have to keep running until around 2014, given the timescales currently envisaged for a replacement train. With this long period in service ahead of them, the leasing companies that own the existing trains, and operators that run them, have been looking at ways of making them more reliable and fuel-efficient. Two Angel Trains power cars on the First Great Western system have been fitted with new MTU engines for evaluation purposes.

Refurbishment

Life extension of IC125s is just part of a buoyant sector in the UK rolling stock industry at present: refurbishment of old stock. With new build work running down, Bombardier has created a purpose-built refurbishment facility at its Derby works. Three projects are currently under way there:

• £45 million order with HSBC for refurbishment of 61×4-car Class 315s used on the suburban lines running out of London Liverpool Street
• £17 million order from Porterbrook Leasing for the refurbishment of 110 Mk 3 coaches for use on inter-city services between London Liverpool Street and Norwich
• £77 million order from Metronet for the refurbishment of 75×6-car trains for London Underground’s District Line

Alstom has closed its UK new-build factory at Washwood Heath, Birmingham, but it remains in the refurbishment sector in the country with a plant at Wolverton, near Milton Keynes, and another in Springburn, Glasgow. Wolverton is working on the refurbishment of light rail cars used by the Docklands Light Railway in London, and also overhaul of heavy-rail cars used on the London suburban system. Springburn is overhauling units used on the Scottish network.

A third Alstom plant, at Eastleigh near Southampton, closes at the end of this year when it completes refurbishment work on Class 455s for Southern Railway. Two other companies work in refurbishment. The Hunslet Barclay factory in Kilmarnock, near Glasgow, is owned by Auricon of Austria. This factory undertakes refurbishment projects for the Scottish market and is currently working on Class 318s for the Glasgow suburban system and Class 322s used on the North Berwick branch near Edinburgh.

The Doncaster plant of the American firm Wabtec is another player in this sector. Wabtec has recently completed work on Class 465 vehicles for South Eastern Trains and is now refurbishing Class 317 electric multiple-units used on the lines out of London Liverpool Street.

Reconfigured industry

The ups and downs of the past few years have seen a reorientation of the British rolling stock market. The 1990s duopoly of GEC Alsthom, inheritor of the former Metro-Cammell factory, and Adtranz, which bought the former Brel factories owned by the nationalised industry, has disappeared.

GEC Alsthom – which changed its name to Alstom – proved adept at winning orders in the post-privatisation bonanza, but was less successful at building trains and introducing them into service. Hit by financial problems and bailed out by the French Government, Alstom has ceased building trains in Britain.

Bombardier, which bought Adtranz, has been through turbulent times but now has the big Metronet order to look forward to. The company owns the last new-build train factory in Britain, at Derby.

Siemens, which bought its way into the UK market with the Heathrow Express trains in the 1990s, has proved a formidable player and is the established No 2 in the country behind Bombardier. Siemens builds all its trains for the UK in Germany.

Hitachi is now breaking into the market with its order for trains for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Chinese and Korean manufacturers have also expressed interest in prospects for the UK. Next time there is a train building boom for British operators, Asian companies can be expected to be strong contenders for the prizes on offer.