Comment: A definitive role for Derby

Around this time last year, Alstom’s historic Derby works reached crisis point. It risked closing forever unless it secured some more orders - and quickly.

In the end, the orders were promised, the plant was saved, and there was celebration all round. Hurrah! Everyone was happy. But for how long?

Peter Plisner visited the Litchurch Lane facility to find out what it’s doing now, one year later, and what the longer-term future holds for the UK’s rail manufacturing sector (pages 30-33).

He found it busy, preparing for the new builds that saved its future last year, as well as expanding into refurbishments - a move that fits with both constrained budgets and environmental causes.

Recycling is good, but it’s not the best environmental choice for end-of-life products. As we recall in our Simon Bradley excerpt this issue (pages 56-57), salvage was all the rage during the Second World War, and it was vital at the time to secure the materials a wartime economy needed for defence. “Your saucepan could end up in a spitfire.” An exaggeration, but the spirit was correct.

Today, we’d call that recycling. But while recycling is better than landfill, it’s usually a more energy-hungry option than extending the life of an energy-intensive product or repurposing it.

Therefore, refurbs are the future - especially if rolling stock designers can design with refurbishment in mind, to make it easier and more cost-effective for engineers in the future.

But a railway can’t run on refits alone. Sooner or later, ageing stock needs to be replaced. And then it will turn to the manufacturers - or those that are still around.

Last year was not the first time the Derby site had been in trouble. When it needs more work to keep going, it shouts loudly to make something happen.

Call it publicity to make public the danger it faces, as I’ve heard some do, or call it a warning, but it’s not crying wolf.

Many people refer to the rolling stock cycle as a boom-and-bust one - although Network Rail CEO Andrew Haines says he doesn’t, at last week’s select committee appearance.

Every economist and businessperson (if not every politician) understands that manufacturers need some certainty in a stable economic environment if they are to invest in building anything, from silicon chips to steel.

Train manufacturers are no exception. That’s why the voices calling for a national strategy for rolling stock are growing. And a strategy for five to ten years, they argue, not just for the next one or two.

Now is a good time to formulate such a strategy. It would need a stable, single mind, and nationalisation could be about to provide one - or that’s the plan anyway.

Holding back on rolling stock orders could be one way in which a cash-strapped government tries to keep expenditure down, but Peter Plisner hears from Litchurch Lane that they don’t think that’s likely. They seem to believe the positive noises coming out of government.

Let’s hope they’re hearing right. There’s a lot at stake, because the export potential of a UK rolling stock manufacturing sector is potentially strong, with rail travel tipped to grow around the world as well as at home.

It’s a popular myth that the UK doesn’t make anything anymore. While not the global powerhouse it once was, the UK still hovers just outside the top ten in the world. As Peter heard on his visit, Litchurch Lane already has some export orders - and there could be more where they came from.

And that potential doesn’t start and end with the one major manufacturer - important as the Alstom Derby works is and has been to the area.

Where there’s a survivor like that, there’s also a supply chain behind it and a local economy that’s grown up around it.

Derby is also set to be the home of the new Great British Railways HQ, which presents a good opportunity to build a thriving rail industry cluster whose benefits go way beyond the local area to the wider economy as a whole. Or even a transport cluster?

But it needs two things to start with: more certainty and more strategic commitment.