European Railroad Discussion > The Economist On Virgin East Coast's Troubles & Renationalization

https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21736560-franchises-financial-woes-raises-questions-over-rail-privatisation-virgin-east-coast-close

"Rising fares and poor service..." "Previous operators have forfeited their contracts..." "Only two bidders for the last two contracts..." "Virgin East Coast was one of only two franchisees that paid more money to the government than it received..."

Some people in the US keep saying, "Why can't we try the British model?" Thoughts?

Running out of track
Virgin East Coast is close to financial collapse
A franchise’s financial woes raises questions over rail privatisation
Feb 8th 2018
THE East Coast mainline is Britain’s most scenic long-distance railway. Connecting London to Edinburgh and the Scottish highlands, the view of Durham’s medieval castle from the line’s tall viaduct running through the city is one of Europe’s best. The business of running the line’s finances is less pretty, however.
On February 5th Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, announced that Virgin East Coast, the franchisee that operates trains on the line for the government, is near collapse. Passenger numbers and revenues have undershot forecasts since the eight-year contract began in 2015. As a result, the firm is running out of money. Virgin East Coast is not the only franchisee that has faced financial ruin running the line. Previous operators forfeited their contracts in 2007 and 2009 after revenues failed to meet forecasts. But this time the crisis comes at an awkward moment for the government. Rising rail fares and poor service quality on some lines have dented public support for rail privatisation. Some 60% of Britons now support a return to state ownership, according to a poll published last month by Sky, a broadcaster. The Labour Party will use any sign of a bail-out as ammunition for its campaign to renationalise the railways.
In the past, the state has often helped struggling franchisees, allowing them to renegotiate terms midway through their contracts. But Andrew Adonis, a former chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, claims that this encourages other operators to seek similar treatment, blowing a hole in the government’s rail budget. When National Express East Coast defaulted when he was a Labour transport secretary in 2009, he renationalised the line. He says that Virgin East Coast’s franchise should also be taken back by the government and its owners, Stagecoach and Virgin Group, banned from future bids.
The government is not keen on that. There is already a shortage of competition for rail franchises. The two awarded last year only attracted two bidders each. Instead it wants to push Stagecoach and Virgin hard enough to show others it will not reward failure, without pushing them out of the industry. The two firms will lose £165m ($230m) in parent-company guarantees for ending the contract. Stagecoach may lose another £94m in performance payments and assets in the subsidiary.
Neither is the government convinced about the benefits of state ownership. Since the East Coast mainline was reprivatised in 2015, it has produced 30% more in payments to the government than its nationalised predecessor did. Returning it to state ownership would have significant startup costs. Mr Grayling has not ruled this out, but he hopes that a new not-for-profit contract with Virgin, whereby the company could keep some of the assets that it might forfeit if it loses the present deal, could offer taxpayers better value.
Last year Virgin East Coast was one of only two franchisees that paid more money to the government than it received. The problem is that the way franchises are awarded incentivises overbidding and the subsequent collapse of the contracts. Fiddly changes to this process, such as using less optimistic passenger forecasts, could help. But given the mind-boggling complexity of these deals, simple solutions such as nationalisation have captured the public mood.

However successive Transport Secretaries tinker with the franchising system contracts are usually awarded to the operator promising the lowest costs and largest premium payments. There have been four franchises awarded for the East Coast line, three have required bail outs or the franchisee has thrown in the towel, and all because they overbid. That should set alarm bells ringing but I don't think the current Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, who gives two short planks a run for their money, has the wherewithal to come up with a better solution.

Beware the Public/Private Partnerships. We're about to embark on an infrastructure disaster in the U.S.

Ditto!

In Germany many Länder (States) have tendered their state supported services to operators other than DB, but it is only local or regional services. The irony of the 'privatised' railway in Britain is that many of the so-called private operators are the nationalised railways of Hong Kong, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. That's why Grayling is terrified of disqualifying Virgin and Stagecoach, apart from First Group all other potential operators are government controlled overseas railways. You couldn't make it up.

Maybe the Brits should try our form of disaster instead of their form - a government owned for profit private corporation for passenger service :)

Please don't anybody in the United States think that our approach provides an adequate model for your problems.

First of all, the circumstances are completely different here compared to the US. For the UK passenger rail is a very widely used mode of travel in a small and densely populated nation, but which has a strong slant towards the upper 50% of the income bracket. This of course is true for most travel, but particularly so for those people who find time and convenience worth paying for. Conversely in the United States most train travel takes place within a few confined areas, or is spread out across the nation as an exceedingly minority travel mode.

Secondly, Nick (86235) is right when he points out that the UK politics of franchise awards are deeply flawed and suspect. The problem for any government is that transport, like most things, raises questions of who gains and who loses which go far beyond the participants in any financial transaction. This means that a simplistic approach based on the amount of money a franchisee is prepared to pay will inevitably have wider social consequences which come back onto politicians. Recent attempts to "improve" the franchising process have introduced into the assessment of a bid various quality elements, but these are of course highly subjective and profoundly political yet concealed from the general public.

The fundamental problem however is that in order to satisfy a rabid right-wing sold on the virtues of free enterprise at any cost, the only model that appeared to be acceptable was one in which, quite inappropriately, operators were separated from the providers of track, rather than the industry preferred model of wholesale privatisation of a single entity. Thus a single national organisation was fragmented into over 100 component parts all privately owned and requiring legal interface between each other. The lawyers have had a field day, subsidies have increased dramatically, and it has required a huge increase in the micromanagement of operations by central government.

Please steer very clear of the UK model of privatisation; public ownership may be a necessary if not sufficient (look at Amtrak)condition for an appropriate transportation service, the devil is always in the detail of what politically the service is seen to be for.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/18 12:51 by spflow.

spflow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Please don't anybody in the United States think
> that our approach provides an adequate model for
> your problems.
>
> First of all, the circumstances are completely
> different here compared to the US. For the UK
> passenger rail is a very widely used mode of
> travel in a small and densely populated nation,
> but which has a strong slant towards the upper 50%
> of the income bracket. This of course is true for
> most travel, but particularly so for those people
> who find time and convenience worth paying for.
> Conversely in the United States most train travel
> takes place within a few confined areas, or is
> spread out across the nation as an exceedingly
> minority travel mode.
>
> Secondly, Nick (86235) is right when he points out
> that the UK politics of franchise awards are
> deeply flawed and suspect. The problem for any
> government is that transport, like most things,
> raises questions of who gains and who loses which
> go far beyond the participants in any financial
> transaction. This means that a simplistic approach
> based on the amount of money a franchisee is
> prepared to pay will inevitably have wider social
> consequences which come back onto politicians.
> Recent attempts to "improve" the franchising
> process have introduced into the assessment of a
> bid various quality elements, but these are of
> course highly subjective and profoundly political
> yet concealed from the general public.
>
> The fundamental problem however is that in order
> to satisfy a rabid right-wing sold on the virtues
> of free enterprise at any cost, the only model
> that appeared to be acceptable was one in which,
> quite inappropriately, operators were separated
> from the providers of track, rather than the
> industry preferred model of wholesale
> privatisation of a single entity. Thus a single
> national organisation was fragmented into over 100
> component parts all privately owned and requiring
> legal interface between each other. The lawyers
> have had a field day, subsidies have increased
> dramatically, and it has required a huge increase
> in the micromanagement of operations by central
> government.
>
> Please steer very clear of the UK model of
> privatisation; public ownership may be a necessary
> if not sufficient (look at Amtrak)condition for an
> appropriate transportation service, the devil is
> always in the detail of what politically the
> service is seen to be for.

On the plus side, regarding quality of infrastructure/maintenance, the UK no longer crashes its trains/kills passengers on a regular basis... and although plenty of people whinge, public patronage of trains is at a very high level with new stations and lines re-opening/being invested in.
Just felt a little balance was needed regarding the UK situation...

This BBC article quotes a spokesman from Stagecoach saying that "Virgin Trains East Coast is a well-run profitable railway..." Possibly this means that although it makes a profit it doesn't make enough of a profit for Stagecoach/Virgin to pay the government the contracted amount of £3.3 billion.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43022843

In October I had a few trips on this rail line and the trains had a lot of passengers. Even outside of the usual busy times the standard class and three first class coaches were nearly full.

Back in the 90's I was involved in the BR privatization as a rolling stock leasing consultant. That was a long time ago, and I have paid only cursory attention since retiring 18 years ago, but here are a few observation FWIW.

At that time three things seemed fairly obvious to me. The plans to privatize RailTrack made no sense at all, the rolling stock leasing companies did made more sense for a variety of reasons, and the train operating companies fell somewhere in the middle. I think those early impressions proved fairly accurate. RailTrack was quickly a costly failure, and I think the rolling stock companies have facilitated standardization, involved the manufacturers in more of the maintenance, reduced costs, and improved access to private capital to finance rolling stock. The Train Operating Companies remain a gray area.

Perhaps it is worth noting that the political imperative for nationalization had two pieces. The obvious one was breaking the political power of the unions. But there was a similar frustration with the entrenched bureaucracy of BR management. The politicians were tired of endless subsidies extracted based on the threat of the trains not running, either because of strikes or because management was telling them the kit was getting old and unsafe. It was clear from the git go that the "privatized" companies would cost more than BR, but the hope was there would be more transparency and from that the potential for long term control of the subsidies.

Probably the saddest part of privatization to me was the disappearance of InterCity which seemed to be a fairly well run efficient operation.

At this point the BR infrastructure has been renationalized, and the rolling stock companies seem to be reasonably successful. The big question is what to do with the train operators. Frankly I don't know the answer.

What has evolved on the Continent seems to be a mixed bag of private and (mostly) public operators, based on open access. The Continental market seems to be more pragmatic and market driven than what has evolved in the U.K., with the exception of course of France. When you have businesses that fundamentally loose money and require government subsidy to continue in business, how you "privatize" that is unclear. In theory you can put it up for bid based on the lowest subsidy, which is what the Brits do, but then you are simply substituting a government bureaucracy to supervise the operators instead of the bureaucracy simply running the trains themselves. I am not sure you are money ahead.

My guess is the government should slowly renationalize those train operating companies that are clearly failing, combine them, and create a new organization to run them. On the margin they should encourage private companies to bid for services that might be attractive to the private sector. I think the game is to have enough private operators that there is some competition and pressure on the government run entities to be reasonably efficient.

FWIW (which probably is not much)

JBWX

exhaustED Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> On the plus side, regarding quality of
> infrastructure/maintenance, the UK no longer
> crashes its trains/kills passengers on a regular
> basis... and although plenty of people whinge,
> public patronage of trains is at a very high level
> with new stations and lines re-opening/being
> invested in.
> Just felt a little balance was needed regarding
> the UK situation...

Fair enough but none of these supposedly good changes can be attributed to privatisation. The safety record has always been rather good (even back in the days of steam traction, unfitted goods trains and semaphore signals with oil lamps after dark), could hardly have been said to be plummeting or grossly unacceptable by the mid-1990s, yet several dramatic accidents around the turn of the millennium could be attributed entirely to the consequences of disaggregation of responsibility further to privatisation.

Similarly the passenger growth has been largely due to enhanced economic circumstances over the last 20 years, and indeed the lack of it to just continue was the cause of both the franchises for the East Coast service failing to meet their expected surpluses. There seem to be two separate questions, namely what would the system look like now as a single entity either in public ownership or indeed privatised as a whole. It strikes me that the particular difficulties that we have been facing have been created by rather pathetic attempts to justify privatisation as being a good thing, with the resulting breaking up of an effective organisation. Inevitably questions of direction and purpose may be relevant, that the present situation strikes me as being the worst of all worlds.

The bottom line would seem to be that we are now paying more than £1 billion in annual additional subsidy to the system, having only sold the whole thing 20 years back for around £1 billion. While lawyers and management consultants will have benefited hugely, this strikes me as a very poor deal for the taxpayer; one might expect to pay more over time for the benefit of receiving a large cash inflow, but the politics of it would appear to have blinded everybody's vision. Governments of all parties have appeared to be mesmerised by the positive changes, which as I said have little to do with privatisation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/18 05:51 by spflow.

jbwest Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Perhaps it is worth noting that the political
> imperative for nationalization had two pieces.
> The obvious one was breaking the political power
> of the unions. But there was a similar
> frustration with the entrenched bureaucracy of BR
> management. The politicians were tired of endless
> subsidies extracted based on the threat of the
> trains not running, either because of strikes or
> because management was telling them the kit was
> getting old and unsafe.

ASLEF - the drivers union - is just as powerful as it has always been, witness the recent spate of strikes by drivers on Southern. The RMT (Rail & Maritine Transport) which is the general service union (formerly the NUR - National Union of Railwaymen) was never as powerful, except the signalling branch, and that remains the same today. ASLEF were 'bought off' if you like by large increases in their salary. And Network Rail via Railtrack inherited the bureaucracy, if anything it's worse, just look at the incompetence electrifying the Gospel Oak to Barking Line in London and the striking over-engineering of the GWR electrification, Network Rail being unable to draw the right lessons from catenary failures on the East Coast Mainline - they attributed them to bad design whereas the real culprit was deferred maintenance during the Railtrack years. Network Rail's biggest failure is probably the lack of any in house expertise and their reliance on consultants. BR for all its faults, was exceedingly good at engineering and operations on a shoestring. Railtrack, thinking of itself as a property company with a distracting sideline of train operation, rid themselves of hundreds of years of experience which has never been replaced.

And the biggest irony of all? A process which was a.) supposed to take railways out of the political arena and b.) reduce their cost on the public purse, has done precisely the opposite. Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences.

spflow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> exhaustED Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > On the plus side, regarding quality of
> > infrastructure/maintenance, the UK no longer
> > crashes its trains/kills passengers on a
> regular
> > basis... and although plenty of people whinge,
> > public patronage of trains is at a very high
> level
> > with new stations and lines re-opening/being
> > invested in.
> > Just felt a little balance was needed regarding
> > the UK situation...
>
> Fair enough but none of these supposedly good
> changes can be attributed to privatisation. The
> safety record has always been rather good (even
> back in the days of steam traction, unfitted
> goods trains and semaphore signals with oil lamps
> after dark), could hardly have been said to be
> plummeting or grossly unacceptable by the
> mid-1990s, yet several dramatic accidents around
> the turn of the millennium could be attributed
> entirely to the consequences of disaggregation of
> responsibility further to privatisation.
>
> Similarly the passenger growth has been largely
> due to enhanced economic circumstances over the
> last 20 years, and indeed the lack of it to just
> continue was the cause of both the franchises for
> the East Coast service failing to meet their
> expected surpluses. There seem to be two separate
> questions, namely what would the system look like
> now as a single entity either in public ownership
> or indeed privatised as a whole. It strikes me
> that the particular difficulties that we have been
> facing have been created by rather pathetic
> attempts to justify privatisation as being a good
> thing, with the resulting breaking up of an
> effective organisation. Inevitably questions of
> direction and purpose may be relevant, that the
> present situation strikes me as being the worst of
> all worlds.
>
> The bottom line would seem to be that we are now
> paying more than £1 billion in annual additional
> subsidy to the system, having only sold the whole
> thing 20 years back for around £1 billion. While
> lawyers and management consultants will have
> benefited hugely, this strikes me as a very poor
> deal for the taxpayer; one might expect to pay
> more over time for the benefit of receiving a
> large cash inflow, but the politics of it would
> appear to have blinded everybody's vision.
> Governments of all parties have appeared to be
> mesmerised by the positive changes, which as I
> said have little to do with privatisation.

You're entitled to your own opinion, but it is only an opinion.... there's no textbook or publication that officially states that none of the improvements or increases in usage of the UK's railways is down to privatization....it's your opinion. And it differs from mine. Not to mention the fact that a private company (and subsequently other companies) which bought US-made locomotives arguably allowed UK rail-freight to survive and prosper because the locos were far more reliable than UK-produced ones at the time.

Worth pointing out that US built locomotives, the class 59, arrived many years before the railways were 'privatised'

Apart from the two open access operators, Grand Central and Hull Trains there's very little private enterprise involved in running trains in Britain, the services which TOCs run are specified by the DfT, the Welsh and Scottish governments. The naive hope that unfettered private enterprise would result in new services foundered on the reality of operating over a constrained network. I remember Northern trialling Rochdale to Euston and Manchester Airport to Euston and Anglia through services from Cromer to Liverpool Street. None lasted for very long. And the most recent Open Access operator, Wrexham and Shropshire were unable to build traffic because Virgin West Coast prevented them from picking up passengers at Wolverhampton, protecting their monopoly. So much for the benefits of competition.

Here in Wales we have the Welsh government paying the German government to run some trains for them. As I said before you couldn't make it up.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/18 09:03 by 86235.

86235 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Worth pointing out that US built locomotives, the
> class 59, arrived many years before the railways
> were 'privatised'


I agree, and I do not think that any decisions on procurement of rolling stock or traction can be credited to privatisation or otherwise. However, the "one size fits all" approach to passenger rolling stock with the aim of maximising residual values seems to be giving us a lowest common denominator of travel experience across the system.

The class 59 and and 66 were clearly a good choice but very similar to the one that could have been made in the late 1940s by the newly nationalised railways, but instead we had to have a final splurge of steam designs followed by multiple attempts by a jingoistic UK industry to produce our own diesel locomotives. Both these policies were ultimately politically determined. It is quite correct to say that my doubts over privatisation as enacted are only an opinion, because I do not have access to some of the detailed data which would be required to give a definitive judgement. However, I do believe that the information which is available, some of which I have quoted, at least supports my hypothesis. Unfortunately knowing many of the players both inside and outside the industry rather support my feelings. I have always maintained that it is the objectives of an organisation rather than its ownership that is perhaps most important in determining the outcomes of its activities.

86235 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here in Wales we have the Welsh government paying
> the German government to run some trains for them.
> As I said before you couldn't make it up.


Yet another very important point. It is even more ironic here in London where bus operations have also been privatised albeit on a franchise basis (following the disastrous "experiment" of total deregulation across the rest of the country).

On the side of buses we now have displayed the logos of the German state railways (DB), the Dutch state railways (Abellio), or best of all that of the Paris public transport operator RATP, which consists of a stylised river Seine crossing a city. If only the public knew what they were looking at!

It should be remembered that when the East Coast franchise was most recently offered for tender, one of the preferred bidders was SNCF, the French national railways, while the incumbent operator was barred from tendering because they are owned by the UK government. As Nick says, you couldn't make it up!

spflow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 86235 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Worth pointing out that US built locomotives,
> the
> > class 59, arrived many years before the
> railways
> > were 'privatised'
>
>
> I agree, and I do not think that any decisions on
> procurement of rolling stock or traction can be
> credited to privatisation or otherwise. However,
> the "one size fits all" approach to passenger
> rolling stock with the aim of maximising residual
> values seems to be giving us a lowest common
> denominator of travel experience across the
> system.
>
> The class 59 and and 66 were clearly a good
> choice but very similar to the one that could have
> been made in the late 1940s by the newly
> nationalised railways, but instead we had to have
> a final splurge of steam designs followed by
> multiple attempts by a jingoistic UK industry to
> produce our own diesel locomotives. Both these
> policies were ultimately politically determined.
> It is quite correct to say that my doubts over
> privatisation as enacted are only an opinion,
> because I do not have access to some of the
> detailed data which would be required to give a
> definitive judgement. However, I do believe that
> the information which is available, some of which
> I have quoted, at least supports my hypothesis.
> Unfortunately knowing many of the players both
> inside and outside the industry rather support my
> feelings. I have always maintained that it is the
> objectives of an organisation rather than its
> ownership that is perhaps most important in
> determining the outcomes of its activities.

What? Come on, this is really simple stuff - the US-built class 59 was far superior to any UK locomotive and proved that to be the case working for a private company. Then, when the railways were fully privatised this allowed EWS to buy US locomotives (the class 66, derived from the 59). Don't you remember how the privatised British Rail was 'unable politically' to buy from the US and bought the far-from-reliable class 60 instead? So privatisation allowed the purchasing of far more reliable, foreign-built locomotives!

The objectives of an organisation....interesting point. In my lifetime the objectives of the nationalised industries seemed largely to have been to milk the tax payer and collect a very comfortable pay check/pension, then in between get away with doing as little as possible. I really don't think the UK mentality works for nationalised industries....a generalisation I know, but generally i think it's true.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/18 10:50 by exhaustED.

86235 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Worth pointing out that US built locomotives, the
> class 59, arrived many years before the railways
> were 'privatised'
>
> Apart from the two open access operators, Grand
> Central and Hull Trains there's very little
> private enterprise involved in running trains in
> Britain, the services which TOCs run are specified
> by the DfT, the Welsh and Scottish governments.
> The naive hope that unfettered private enterprise
> would result in new services foundered on the
> reality of operating over a constrained network. I
> remember Northern trialling Rochdale to Euston and
> Manchester Airport to Euston and Anglia through
> services from Cromer to Liverpool Street. None
> lasted for very long. And the most recent Open
> Access operator, Wrexham and Shropshire were
> unable to build traffic because Virgin West Coast
> prevented them from picking up passengers at
> Wolverhampton, protecting their monopoly. So much
> for the benefits of competition.
>
> Here in Wales we have the Welsh government paying
> the German government to run some trains for them.
> As I said before you couldn't make it up.

I've heard of 'German efficiency' many times, but not Welsh efficiency...I think that's why German organisations end up running passenger trains in Wales.

exhaustED Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Don't you remember how the privatised British Rail
> was 'unable politically' to buy from the US and
> bought the far-from-reliable class 60 instead?

I would suggest that is not actually true, it's convienient but simply not correct. By the late 1980s BR had been sectorised and procurement was by open tender, the procurement of what turned out to be the 60s was a text book example of two approaches, that of GEC / EMD (yes EMD partnered with GEC on their bid) the 59 clone to be built at Crewe and Brush Traction who offered a choice of Mirrlees or Ruston power plants, both of which had received type approval after testing in class 37/9s. Metro Cammell also submitted a bid but was disqualified at a very early stage because they were offering a mix and match of different components, many of which were untried. Right up to the tender award the smart money was on GEC / EMD based on the performance of the 59, but in the event, as we now know, the whole order went to Brush, which was a surprise. You are welcome to borrow my copies of Modern Railways to follow the saga but what it came down to is that GEC / EMD listened to what BR managers told them they wanted whilst Brush simply read and responded to the words written in the tender document. And 30 years later the 60s are still with us, working for Colas and DB so they can't be that terrible, in fact they haul heavy trains, the 6B13 Robeston to Westerleigh oil for instance, which are beyond the capability of the 66.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/18 12:42 by 86235.

86235 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> exhaustED Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Don't you remember how the privatised British
> Rail
> > was 'unable politically' to buy from the US and
> > bought the far-from-reliable class 60 instead?
>
> I would suggest that is not actually true, it's
> convienient but simply not correct. By the late
> 1980s BR had been sectorised and procurement was
> by open tender, the procurement of what turned out
> to be the 60s was a text book example of two
> approaches, that of GEC / EMD (yes EMD partnered
> with GEC on their bid) the 59 clone to be built at
> Crewe and Brush Traction who offered a choice of
> Mirrlees or Ruston power plants, both of which had
> received type approval after testing in class
> 37/9s. Metro Cammell also submitted a bid but was
> disqualified at a very early stage because they
> were offering a mix and match of different
> components, many of which were untried. Right up
> to the tender award the smart money was on GEC /
> EMD based on the performance of the 59, but in the
> event, as we now know, the whole order went to
> Brush, which was a surprise. You are welcome to
> borrow my copies of Modern Railways to follow the
> saga but what it came down to is that GEC / EMD
> listened to what BR managers told them they wanted
> whilst Brush simply read and responded to the
> words written in the tender document. And 30 years
> later the 60s are still with us, working for Colas
> and DB so they can't be that terrible, in fact
> they haul heavy trains, the 6B13 Robeston to
> Westerleigh oil for instance, which are beyond the
> capability of the 66.

You don't give up easily! Seriously, I take your point about open tender but I've heard anecdotal evidence that the UK government 'leaned' heavily on BR, to select the 'UK option' (i.e. class 60), also Edward Gleed's interesting book on the class 60s says something very similar. I guess the exact situation will never be really known...
I agree with you that the class 60 is very capable in terms of haulage capability, with a starting tractive effort higher than a class 66, but their lower speed capability combined with their reliability (which never came close to matching the 59s and 66s) have led to the current situation... 100 class 60s were built in total, and well over two thirds of those are currently stored/not in use, and have been for up to ten years or so. The 20-30 or so still in regular use have had to be heavily refurbished/rebuilt.
In contrast, close to 500 class 66s were built for use in the UK, I think only 3 have been scrapped due to crash damage, but none have been stored/withdrawn from service for any length of time. If i'm honest, I prefer to see a class 60, but the industry has made its preference pretty clear. I hope the 60s continue to see use for a long time to come, especially in our neck-of-the-woods in the west of the UK!
Hopefully we'll see some on the log trains or engineers trains soon, with spring and longer days approaching.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/18 15:24 by exhaustED.