Telegrammed by our man at 222 Marylebone Road
According to Alastair Darling's 2008 Pre-Budget Report today: "Up to 200 new rail carriages will be delivered earlier."
Since the egregious 'Rolling Stock Puzzle' does not contain a timetable for the delivery of any the 1300 (sic) new vehicles in the High Level Output Specification, how can vehicles be delivered earlier?
Elsewhere in the Report it says that there will be '£300 million to accelerate the delivery of up to 200 new carriages to expand capacity on the rail network'.
How can DafT accelerate delivery?
Only by placing orders in its own right before negotiations to changes in Franchise Agreements are concluded.
Which means telling TOCs, 'You're going to have these Electrostars we've bought as a job lot when they are delivered'.
This is an admirably sensible approach - which is why we don't think it is what the Pre-Budget Report means.
And that 'up-to 200' sounds distinctly fishy.
The only additional vehicles remotely capable of being 'accelerated ' are the 30 four car EMUs for NXEA and the 42 - oops 24 - extra DMU vehicles for TransPennine.
Predictably the running dog lackeys at ATOC welcomed this meaningless commitment.
UPDATE: Tom from Blairwatch writes:
"It did occur to me that since there's only one place you can build trains in the country, and it's full of people building trains, what was the point? If you ordered 200 Electrostar vehicles the delivery date would pattern-match 201x anyway - they've got those South African Electrostars, the Class 378s for Boris, the 2009TS for Boris and the 'S' stock for Boris to build first. My goodness, Boris is getting a big new trainset, isn't he?
"What might be fun is to engage in stimulus trading with the Germans. For instance, we could start by buying a job lot of off-the-peg Desiros (beefing up the Class 450 fleet would be favourite, guys), in return for the German police buying an equal cost in Jaguars, or something.
"Alternatively put some cash into refurbishing and life-extending the Class 150 fleet."
UPDATE: Sim Harris writes...
"That makes Bombardier sound too busy to take on any more, but not so.
"There is capacity for 8 lines at Litchurch Lane and only 5 are in use (not at all bad, but that still leaves 3). Gautrain is nearly complete, too.
"Bring the work on!"
