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If something works, why not buy some more? Too boring.
Last year the United States airline business was expected to lose $5.5billion. The only major airline to make money was South Western, the pioneer low cost operator, with a profit of around $335m.
This I read in the International Herald Tribune, flying back from Christmas in Morocco in a Boeing 737-800. We had flown out in a 737-400, made an internal hop in a 737-500, so I noted with interest that South Western flies an all-737 fleet.
Here's a teaser. In terms of numbers built, which is top, the EE507 traction motor or the Boeing 737?
A no brainer? Think of all those traction motors under slam door stock, and still running powering Class 455s. And airliners are big things costing hundreds of millions.
In total 5,589 EE507s were manufactured. So where does that leave Boeing? The answer is catching up fast, to date over 5,400 737s have been ordered since the first contract in 1965.
So what's this got to do with railways? Well, consider the on-going saga of post privatisation DMU procurement.
As the train builders prepared their stalls for the coming traction and rolling stock market, the consensus was that there would not be a big demand for diesel multiple units. Bombardier (then Adtranz) was left to develop the Turbostar and with it broke the 1064 day hiatus with an order from Chiltern.
But it soon became apparent that the market for DMUs was growing. Alstom challenged Turbostar with the Coradia Class 175 and its 125mile/h sibling the Class 180.
When the two Virgin franchises went out to tender, Alstom was preferred for the West Coast, which meant that Bombardier won the Cross Country fleet, originally for a combination of DMUs and loco-hauled trains, but then all-DMU, split between conventional and tilting versions of the Voyager.
Meanwhile, Porterbrook had also placed several speculative orders for Turbostars. But when Midland Main Line adopted Turbostar for its half hourly stopping service, this column, unkindly, pointed out the Class 170's unsuitability for inter-city service.
When the franchise was renegotiated MML agreed and went for some upmarket DMUs. But because the 170 was becoming the 737 of DMUs, owner National Express was able to cascade the existing fleet to Central.
At which we come to what I call Gresley Stanier Syndrome and my Austrian cousin Professor Sigmund Foerd (James ideally Ford with an umlaut over the o) calls Old Railway Procurement Disorder (ORPD). Sigmund is Head of the Railways Department in the Institute for Transport Psychology in Vienna and wrote his PhD on the BR Modernisation Plan Diesels.
Since no one in their right mind would buy a Class 180, and the Class 220 and 221 designs were idiosyncratically Virgin, MML went for a development of the Class 220, with symmetrical door spacing and other changes, involving several thousand man hours of design work.
You could regard the Class 222 as a series development of the basic Class 220 ‘platform'. But, according to Informed Sources, only 40% of the train wires are the same.
Hull Trains which, being small, was immune to ORPD, which generally flourishes in big organisations with big egos. It started off with 170s and then upgraded off the shelf with some Class 222s.
However, ORPD soon resurfaced with TransPennine. This column covered the options in detail, including a hotted up Class 170. But no, there had to be competitive tendering, which was a bit handicapped by Alstom being a non starter and Bombardier making the two ‘industry standards'.
So now we have the Class 185 Desiro from Siemens, with all that means in terms of incompatibility and low residual value for the small fleet. Not to mention a diesel learning curve to climb. (What's that, Basil? Don't mention the ICE-TD?).
Does compatibility matter? Well, had TransPennine bought Class 170s, they would have needed fewer of them because they would have run in multiple with the existing Class 158s. And lease rentals would probably have been lower.
Oddly, the ROSCOs seem to suffer from a strain of ORPD to judge by their willingness to give the whip hand to their customers by funding horribly non-standard mini-fleets with all that means in reducing their ability to shift trains around the Network and residual value.
Now, we have the Serco-Nedrail proposal to import ultra-cheap Chinese DMUs to replace Pacers. The new CSR unit was described in glowing terms, if somewhat disingenuously, in last month's Modern Railways by my old chum David Shipley of consultants Interfleet Technology.
What David failed to mention was that the ‘major UK-based consultancy … retained to provide technical support' for CSR's European sales drive is none other than Interfleet Technology. And the view among old China hands of my acquaintance is that the CSR unit looks fine on paper, but to get it into service in the UK would need a high level of technical support. This would mean a big fees for the consultancy involved.
Nor do I buy the argument that the CSR DMU is aimed at the unique niche called ‘Pacer replacement' and that anything else is unaffordable. If you need to replace Pacers, the obvious policy is to cascade refurbished Class 150s, with Class 156/158 moving down, instead of going into store. But then that would require a rolling stock strategy which we don't have.
Finally, a blast from the past. British Rail made the Class 165 Networker Turbos route specific, exploiting the loading gauge of the former Great Western routes to build a wide body DMU. This gives Chiltern and First a whip hand over the owning ROSCO, since the Class 165s can't be used anywhere else.
But, Chiltern, despite continuing to buy standard Turbostars, has an OJEU Notice out for a further 60 DMU vehicles. And, according to Informed Sources, would dearly love to acquire more widebodies.
Not unconnected with this aspiration is the fact that Chiltern's owner, Laing is in partnership with GNER in bidding, for the Greater Western replacement franchise. And a widebody could run anywhere God's Wonderful Railway laid the trackbed.
But cousin Sigmund is the apparent immunity of the freight operators to ORPD. By European railway standards the Class 66 is a less than optimum, not to say rough, locomotive.
But, were I a freight operator, the Class 66 would be my automatic choice. It works, it's reliable and because it's in production you can buy five or fifty. Spares and maintenance are easily available and residual value is high.
Meanwhile, the DfT's conference in February on the theme ‘The future of rail – making it happen', I stayed for the ‘breakout groups' which, in the afternoon explored various issues. One of the groups, on the implications for train operators and their customers was led by Mark Lambirth, DfT's Director, Rail Strategy and Resources.
I got stuck in on the problems caused by ORPD and urged the merits of standardisation . When he reported back to full conference he actually quoted the 5,400 737 orders in support of greater standardisation for trains and infrastructure, which was encouraging.
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