Train builders in a turbulent market

摘要

Feast and famine has characterised the traction and rolling stock business for as long as I can remember. When I joined English Electric Traction in 1962 the Modernisation Plan boom was at its height. When 1 left the industry four years later we had just closed Robert Stephensons & Hawthornes at Darlington and demand was tailing off. Returning in 1976, the feast part of the cycle was in full swing but was about to tip over. A decade on, and it was back to boom again. And while I had intended to make this month's column a table and chart free zone after last month's excesses, I thought readers would appreciate this modest graphical representation of the ups and downs of the traction and rolling stock market. You will note that the chart gets a bit 'busy' in the 1980s with double the bars. This is where British Rail statistics, covering traction and rolling stock, overlap with the Department for Transport statistics which are for rolling stock only. Hence the difference in 1987-88 when Class 60s were being built. There is clearly an anomaly in the figures for 1993-94 - probably because the man responsible for these statistics was privatising himself.