On Jul 14, 2:59 pm, wrote:
On Jul 14, 2:09 pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:

The usual suspects, Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens; plus Hitachi, have applied
to build the Thameslink EMUs.

This phase of the procurement process seems fairly predictable, would the
DfT not save time and money by prequalifying the first three for any future
UK rolling stock builds, or would that be against the rules, in case there
are other train builders around who might be interested?

The DfT would save even more taxpayers money if they just built
another batch of the dual voltage 376/377 series with any appropriate
traction system upgrades. But that would require a bit of common sense
in government - a rare commodity.

Yes in the short term. In the long term, it's likely to be more cost
effective to not give a single manufacturer a monopoly in the supply
of UK suburban rolling stock (and Siemens would've been justifiably
****ed off, given that a batch of dual-voltage 350s would be pretty
much equivalent to a batch of 37xes).

However, it would have been much more sensible (ie cheap) to make the
TL2k+n specification equivalent to "Desiro or Electrostar, but a bit
faster and a bit lighter; if you're not Siemens or Bombardier you're
welcome to bid but bear in mind that we're not going to pay the
development costs of a whole new train platform", rather than going
for a step change in capabilities and weights.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org