UK: ‘Newport is part of our manufacturing capacity; it’s part of the overall CAF footprint’, the Spanish rolling stock manufacturer’s Business Development Director Richard Garner told Rail Business UK at InnoTrans. The plant ’is not dedicated to just UK work’, he added, reporting that CAF was working with the British government with the aim of winning international orders for the plant.
Garner highlighted the recent award of a contract to supply LNER with 10 tri-mode trainsets as an example of CAF’s continued interest in the UK market, and pointed to a number of current competitions for trains, some of which are funded despite government caution about the nation’s finances.
Train operating owning groups’ increasing interest in open access could also raise the prospect of orders for smaller fleets, and despite reports that some manufacturers may not be interested in such niche procurements, Garner confirmed that CAF is ready to talk to anyone interested in its products.
The LNER sets are likely to be a showcase for its product range, and ‘CAF already has products that it can offer to the UK market’.
The supplier expects to see new orders focusing on multi-modal trains, driven by the slow progress towards a fully electrified railway and increasing talk of discontinuous electrification. ‘We have products that can satisfy that, we’re well placed’, said Garner.
He sounded a note of caution against ‘battery technology being seen as the solution to all problems’, pointing out the need to consider what changes to the infrastructure and even timetables may also be required.
’If you want to solve some of the investment problems through a rolling stock solution, then you will also have to think about how you operate the railway as well’, he said. Should battery trains require increased dwell times at platforms for recharging, this may impact on stations where capacity is already overstretched as well as the ability to maintain existing timetables, he felt.
CAF will continue to work with operators already operating its products in order to drive up performance of its existing in-service trains. TransPennine Express recently reported that reliability had improved rapidly after closer work with CAF including the roll out of a number of improvements to its Class 397 EMU fleet.
Garner emphasised that ‘it is in our interest to support every operator; reliability is fundamental, we want to make sure we get the best out of our trains, achieve the highest levels of reliability and do everything we can for our operator customers’.