What They Do At Crewe

The free paper has landed once more. And, once again, it contains pronouncements from our MP, Edward Timpson (the man with marginally more charisma than a Burton’s dummy). And, as so often, Eddie’s take on the railway is plain flat wrong. Fortunately I’ve been out and about this afternoon with my camera, so I can point out to him, and anyone else, the error of his ways.

Eddie has taken to telling that jobs from Crewe Works are being “exported to Japan”, which as I’ve said many times, is complete crap. What the Works does is, to a significant extent, to do with repair and refurbishment. Which cannot be exported half way round the world. The Works no longer builds trains – the last Tory government’s actions put paid to that – so building trains partly in Japan cannot involve any exporting of Crewe jobs. If anyone exported the jobs, Eddie’s pals from their last campaign covered that one.

Recently, another of Bombardier’s facilities managed to drop some of the coaches from one of Open Access operator Hull Trains’ Pioneer sets from their jacks. It was a severe enough drop to put the future of the stock into question. But Crewe Works looked over the damage and pronounced it repairable. And so it was.

This afternoon, the two repaired coaches left the works. Here is the first, and here’s the second. I commend these images to Eddie, and anyone else who is unsure of the specialism of the workforce. Our MP should be out there, telling anyone and everyone to bring their rolling stock repairs to Crewe, where they know how to do these repairs properly.

This is what they do at Crewe.