Will all of the UK train assembly lines survive?

Britain’s train manufacturers face even leaner times ahead unless the government introduces a clear strategy for new rolling stock… and then follows through with a programme of orders, says PHILIP HAIGH

While many eyes are focusing on this year’s ‘Railway 200’ bicentenary celebrations, the equivalent milestone in rolling stock manufacturing passed in 2023 with little celebration of Robert Stephenson and Company and its Forth Street works in Newcastle upon Tyne. The names that followed read as a roll call of British locomotive history - Vulcan Foundry, Hawthorn Leslie, Sharp Stewart, Manning Wardle, Hunslet, Beyer Peacock, Dubs, and Andrew Barclay to name just a few. Separate companies made wagons and passenger coaches, with the latter initially coming from coachbuilders with history in the stagecoach market. Hence Joseph Wright set up works at Saltley in Birmingham - the same suburb that built Avanti West Coast’s Class 390s and which will house HS2’s rolling stock depot. Between them all, they supplied British railway operations…

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RAIL (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 1026

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