Peer review: Chris Green
Former Managing Director, Network SouthEast
Travelling around the UK rail network today is a reminder of how dramatically modern train standards have risen in my lifetime, in both performance and customer standards. My early memories of DMU travel are of drivers topping up overheating radiators from watering cans. Today, failures in service are rare, and passenger quality has been revolutionised with air conditioning, passenger information systems and WiFi becoming the norm.
Competitive tendering is sometimes blamed for creating a multiplicity of designs, but in my experience the fault usually lies with weak specifications by the purchaser.
In my BR days with Network SouthEast, we put years of effort into specifying robust equipment for the new Networker 465 train. The weakest link was always going to be door reliability, and so we held technical competitions to test rival products to destruction until we found the most reliable product for inclusion in the specification. The competitive tendering was on price, quality and delivery dates - not on random choice of equipment.
Competitive tendering can, of course, bring innovation where it is appropriate. The Virgin Trains bid for West Coast Trains in 1996 was based on the bold decision to bring tilting trains back to the West Coast in partnership with Angel Trains - despite the failure of BR’s Advanced Passenger Train (APT).
I also commend the trend towards manufacturers maintaining any new fleets that they build - but not the older inherited fleets. Manufacturers will admit in private that when designing a new train, they are more likely to invest in more robust equipment if they know that they are going to be held to tough reliability targets for the next 30 years. I found this worked well on both the Pendolino and Voyager fleets - but it was not a success on the legacy locomotive-hauled fleets, where the maintenance should have been retained with the in-house experience.
I believe that Britain is now well placed to expand its rolling stock fleets as demand rises. Each market has a choice of quality trains from competing manufacturers, and tighter specifications have resulted in a converging of standards and compatibility. The intercity market is about to get its standard product for the coming decades in the shape of Hitachi Super Express assembled in Britain; the extensive EMU and DMU markets have two quality competitors to choose from in the Siemens Desiros and the Bombardier Electrostars/Turbostars; and then there’s the emerging Hitachi AT200 EMU.
But Mike Jones is absolutely right to highlight the extraordinary failure of the rail industry to identify a standard UK train coupling. This is the result of weak specification, rather than of competitive tendering. We still need to achieve compatibility around a single mechanical coupler that would allow any train to assist any other failed train off the main line.
