Dear Sir,
After reading Paul Howell’s letter in the Newton News (13/12/24), for once I must agree with him, having learned of the deal with Hitachi and First Group and decided to look into it a little more.
It seems that First Group sort of realised that Labour was going to win the election, they lobbied the Labour party hoping they would keep the trains as was, part public and part government, as they had several services that would shortly end when the Labour party renationalised the railways.
This company has trains running in certain areas in a access agreement, basically they run independently on certain lines, self financed, the only way forward now they have been given, in the last few weeks, the go ahead for other lines, was to invest in new trains and carriages, having dealt with Hitachi before and were pleased with the goods, the order was placed.
Because of the time this took place there was no way the previous government could have done anything. The Labour party, Starmer, our PM, his followers including local MP Alan Strickland and North East Mayor McGuinness have tried to tell us this was of their doing, in reality it just happens to come at the right time because of the rationalisation they have brought in.
According to Hitachi, this will be a stop gap filler and more orders are needed to keep the company continually running at full capacity. We know that once the Hitachi and Alston have the contract for HS2, this was sorted in the previous government time, but, due to delays and changes, the start of the building of the stock is still a long way off. As for the Northern Echo, our local Newton News and other individuals, including Paul Howell, who have worked tirelessly to keep our flagship train manufacturer Hitachi in focus, let’s hope it helps keep the workers and factory in permanent production.
We will all look in anticipation at our Newton News for future news about Hitachi and let’s hope, as we now are used to numerous let downs by the present government, it’s not a one off. I have just seen that the lump Class803 fleet became the most reliable UK based train in its first year of device, congratulations to all at Hitachi.
John Armstrong
Defoe Crescent.