An order for more than just trains
The government has confirmed a major train order. It is for the north of England. The decision authorises the construction of a new fleet of 29 trains to be operated by TransPennine Express. This is a £1 billion contract. The trains will be built in Britain, a choice that carries significant weight beyond the railway itself, touching on industrial strategy, technological direction and long standing political promises made to northern communities.
The order is an act of industrial policy. A lifeline. The new fleet will be assembled at Alstom’s factory at Litchurch Lane in Derby, a site whose future has been uncertain. Number 10 states the contract will directly support 350 jobs at the plant. It will support thousands more. Nearly six thousand jobs are linked to the decision across the UK supply chain. This is a direct intervention. It is a choice to sustain a specific and historic centre of British train manufacturing, securing a production line that was at risk.
These are not conventional trains. They are battery electric units. This represents a specific technological path, a compromise between running diesel trains on unelectrified routes and the vast expense of putting up new overhead wires across the entire network. The bi-mode trains can draw power from wires where they exist and then switch to their onboard batteries for sections of track without them. It is a hybrid solution. It is a bet on a particular type of engineering to solve a problem that has challenged northern rail networks for decades.
The investment is also part of a political plan. It is a response. TransPennine Express has delivered poor service for years, a situation that led to its effective nationalisation. The government presents this new fleet as a core part of the fix, promising ‘faster, more reliable journeys to the north’. The plans include specific targets for improvement. Journey times between Manchester and Leeds are set to be cut by up to ten minutes. The trip from Manchester to York could be as much as fourteen minutes shorter. This is a tangible promise, an investment designed to show progress after the cancellation of HS2’s northern leg.
A factory on the brink
The future of the Litchurch Lane works was in doubt. Deep doubt. For months, a menacing gap in the order book had threatened the very existence of the site in Derby, Britain's last remaining factory for building trains from scratch. Without new contracts, it faced the genuine prospect of permanent closure. The company is Alstom. The risk was real. A shutdown would have meant the abrupt end of a long and proud manufacturing tradition in the city, a place where carriages and locomotives have been constructed for well over a century. Three hundred and fifty jobs were directly at stake at the plant itself, a highly skilled workforce facing the prospect of redundancy in a specialised field where alternative employment is exceptionally scarce. The consequences of such a closure would have rippled destructively through the local economy and far beyond the factory gates. It would have been a devastating blow to the entire region.
Then came the announcement from the government. This new order is a reprieve. It is a crucial, last minute intervention that fills the production void which had loomed over the Derby site for so long. The contract for twenty nine trains, to be operated by TransPennine Express, is not a routine piece of public procurement. It is a targeted industrial policy decision. The choice to build these battery electric units specifically at Litchurch Lane ensures the continuity of work, preventing a shutdown that unions, local politicians and company management had warned was becoming inevitable. Production is not scheduled to begin until 2028. This deal bridges that four year gap. It keeps the lights on. It secures the unique and accumulated engineering skills housed within the factory walls, preserving a national asset that was perilously close to being dismantled and lost for good.
The impact is wider than Derby. Much wider. The 350 jobs secured at the Alstom plant are just the headline figure, the beginning of the story told by the government's own calculations. Number 10 projects that the effects on the national supply chain will be enormous, supporting a workforce of nearly six thousand people spread across the United Kingdom. This single order for trains destined to run in the north of England creates and sustains work in hundreds of other British companies that supply everything from high specification cabling and passenger seating to onboard software and specialist metal components for the chassis. Each carriage assembled at Litchurch Lane is a complex jigsaw of technology, drawing on an intricate network of suppliers that would also have been grievously damaged by a factory closure. The decision therefore props up an entire industrial ecosystem. The factory survives. The skills are retained. The supply chain remains intact.
The battery compromise
These are not standard electric trains. They are bi modes. This means they have two distinct ways of drawing power. Where overhead power lines are available, the trains will raise a pantograph and run as conventional electric units, drawing clean power from the grid. On the many sections of the northern network where no such wires exist, the pantograph is lowered and the train switches to its second power source. That source is a series of large, high capacity batteries stored on board. The train then runs on battery power. It is silent. It has no emissions. The batteries are recharged automatically when the train returns to an electrified section of track.
This technology is a compromise. It is a deliberate choice. The alternative would be the full electrification of every route these trains are intended to run on. Full electrification is the gold standard for rail modernisation, but it is a hugely expensive and disruptive undertaking, requiring years of weekend and evening closures for engineers to install miles of masts, gantries and copper wiring. The government has instead chosen a technological workaround. A shortcut. This £1 billion order allows for the introduction of modern, high performance rolling stock without committing to the vast civil engineering programme needed to electrify the entire TransPennine main line. It delivers faster trains now. It is a pragmatic decision, one that accepts the imperfect state of the existing infrastructure and finds a way to work with it, not replace it entirely.
The primary advantage is speed. The government promises faster journeys. The Department for Transport projects that the new fleet will cut journey times between Manchester and Leeds by as much as ten minutes. An even bigger saving is forecast for the line between Manchester and York. That journey could be up to fourteen minutes shorter. Passengers will also notice a quieter, smoother ride, a significant improvement over the ageing diesel trains many of these units will replace. But there are limitations. Batteries add significant weight. They also have a finite range and lifespan. The whole operational plan depends on the trains having enough time under the wires to fully recharge during their daily service patterns, a complex calculation that leaves little room for error on a congested network. The solution is clever. It is also fragile. It papers over the gaps in Britain's railway infrastructure. It does not fix them.
A plan for a failing line
TransPennine Express was a failing service. For years, passengers across the north of England endured a timetable that was more fiction than fact, with last minute cancellations and chronic delays becoming a grimly predictable part of daily travel. The company had become a symbol of decline. Its performance was unacceptable. In May 2023, after months of pressure and abysmal reliability figures, the government finally acted. The operator, FirstGroup, had its contract terminated. Control of the franchise was passed to the Department for Transport’s own management team, the so called operator of last resort, a move that brought the service into public ownership. This new fleet is central to that state run rescue mission.
The new trains are intended to fix the operator’s most fundamental problem. Unreliability. The government's announcement explicitly promises the Alstom fleet will bring ‘more reliable journeys to the north’, a direct acknowledgement of the chaos that preceded the nationalisation. These twenty nine units represent a clean break from a troubled past, providing the new state owned management with the modern, dependable hardware it needs to rebuild passenger trust from an extremely low base. They cannot fix everything. But they are a start. Replacing older, more failure prone diesel trains is a crucial step towards operating a service that people can actually depend on for commuting, for business and for leisure. The order is a tangible investment in turning the company around.
New rolling stock is not a complete solution. The problems at TransPennine Express were complex, involving difficult industrial relations and a shortage of trained staff, issues that new carriages alone cannot resolve. The publicly run operator has spent over a year attempting to stabilise the service, negotiating new rest day working agreements with drivers and trying to clear a huge training backlog. It is a slow process. Results have been mixed. This £1 billion procurement is the government’s long term strategy, a bet that better technology is the ultimate key to delivering a better railway for passengers who have waited long enough for improvement. The new trains are the most visible part of that bet. They are a promise of future competence, but passengers will have to wait until 2028 for them to arrive.
The ghost of HS2
This money does not appear from nowhere. It is a direct political consequence of the decision to cancel the northern leg of the HS2 high speed railway. That choice was controversial. It also freed up billions of pounds for other projects. This is political. This train order is where some of that money is going. It is a core part of Network North, the government’s replacement transport programme built from the repurposed HS2 budget, a plan which promises hundreds of smaller, localised schemes instead of one single grand project. The strategy is to reallocate funding into projects that are more visible and deliver benefits on a shorter timescale than the decades long horizon of HS2.
This announcement is a piece of that strategy. It is an example of levelling up in practice, or so the government claims. The cancellation of the high speed line to Manchester created a significant political problem for ministers, who were accused of abandoning the north. The Network North plan is the solution, and this train order for TransPennine Express is one of its first major, tangible outcomes. This is the core calculation. The government is betting that voters will prefer tangible improvements to their existing daily commutes, like the promise of cutting fourteen minutes from the Manchester to York service, over a far more expensive, disruptive and distant high speed alternative. This is a different vision for northern transport.
The price is £1 billion. That is the figure attached to this fleet. Downing Street has presented the order as a major investment in the north. The promise is that the money saved from not building a new railway to Manchester is now being spent on improving the old railways that people already use, a message aimed squarely at voters in constituencies across the region. The choice to build the trains in Derby reinforces this. A factory is saved. Jobs are secured. The announcement is timed to demonstrate action, a direct answer to critics of the HS2 decision and a signal of intent ahead of a general election.
But the benefits are not immediate. The trains will not arrive for years. The first units are not scheduled to be built until 2028. This long lead time is a political risk. The announcement delivers a boost now, securing positive headlines and providing a lifeline to Alstom’s Derby factory. The actual improvement to passenger journeys, the faster and more reliable services between Leeds and Manchester, remains a distant prospect. It is a promise made by one government that may fall to another to deliver, dependent on future spending decisions and infrastructure upgrades that have not yet been finalised. Four years is a long time.
Four years is a long time
The first train will be built in 2028. That is four years away. Passengers will continue using the old rolling stock while Alstom prepares its Litchurch Lane works in Derby for the new production run. Nothing changes for them yet. The promise of a fourteen minute journey time reduction between Manchester and York remains just that, a promise, tied to a completion date far in the future. The announcement provides a headline. It does not provide a train. Work is years away.
Before the first battery train can run, the railway itself must be upgraded. This is a critical step. These bi mode units need charging facilities at key points on the network and require sections of electrified overhead line to replenish their power while in motion, work that is complex and expensive. Installing this infrastructure across the sprawling, often Victorian, routes that TransPennine Express serves is a major civil engineering project in its own right. These upgrades are not optional. They are essential. Without new power sources, the billion pound fleet cannot deliver the faster, more reliable journeys the government has advertised.
Politics creates another uncertainty. An election is near. The government that signed the contract may not be the one that oversees its execution or pays the final bill, because future administrations have different priorities and face different economic pressures. A signed contract is a powerful commitment but it is not unbreakable, and the project’s funding could become a target in a future spending review if political calculations were to change. The scheme needs support. That support may not last. The deal is done for now.
For the Derby factory, the order is a lifeline. It is not an immediate fix. While the deal secures 350 jobs at the plant, the long four year gap until production begins creates a significant operational challenge for Alstom, which must find other work to bridge the period between its current projects ending and the TransPennine Express contract starting. A factory cannot be paused. A skilled workforce cannot be expected to wait. The announcement stopped the clock on closure. It did not restart the production line. This is the problem now.
Sources. Guardian UK: New battery-powered trains will ‘bring faster journeys to north’. Independent UK: New £1 billion electric trains to ‘bring faster journeys to North,’ Burnham says.
Analysis. Drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed above and reviewed by an editor before publication. Jnews links to the organisations it writes about.
