Our man in Marsham Street, top civil servant Sir Humphrey Beeching, tells Eye over an after work G&T that the on-going delay to the announcement of the preferred bidder for the 202 DMU vehicles is due to the dramatic improvement in the reliability of the Pacer fleets.
With three fleets over 6000 miles per casualty and only one under 4000, the operating and engineering chappies reckon they can now get by with fewer new, and expensive, DMUs which, in any event are generally used by provincial people for whom Pacers are more than sufficient.
Suggestions that DfT Rail can't raise the funding, or find an independent expert willing to undercut Porterbrook on lease rentals are officially deprecated.
