Train blunder costs taxpayer £100m

The taxpayer is facing a bill of up to £100m after it emerged that scores of new trains will not be able to enter service because of a shortage of power on the rail network in southern England.

The trains, part of a £2bn order for new rolling stock to replace ageing slam-door carriages, will have to be "mothballed" at Ministry of Defence sites around the country as they begin to arrive.

Ministers have now ordered the Strategic Rail Authority and Network Rail to undertake an urgent upgrade of the power supply on the three big commuter networks in southern England but this is not expected to be completed until 2006.

A total of 2,000 new carriages are on order to South West Trains, South Central Trains and Connex South Eastern. The trains are scheduled to begin carrying passengers this summer. However, in the case of South West Trains alone, it is estimated that only 160 of the 785 cars on order from the German manufacturer, Siemens, will be able to enter service.

In total 500 to 1,000 of the carriages may have to be kept in storage by the MoD until the power upgrade has been carried out. MoD sites are used because this is the simplest way of guarding the trains against vandalism.

The train operating companies and train leasing companies are now pressing the Strategic Rail Authority and Network Rail to shoulder the burden of the storage costs and the heavy financing charges that will have to be paid while the trains stand idle.

The problem has arisen because the new trains are fitted with AC traction motors which draw more power from the line than the DC motors used by existing rolling stock. Siemens has already modified the fleet of Desiro trains on order to SWT so they run on lower levels of power and delayed the delivery of some of the carriages for a year.

Haydn Abbott, the chief executive of Angel Trains, the leasing company supplying the SWT fleet, said: "At the time the order was placed the extent of the power supply problems were not realised. Somehow it was an issue which fell between several stools. To get this far and then find that the trains cannot run is disappointing."

Mr Abbott also disclosed that orders for new rolling stock look likely to fall by 90 per cent over the next eight years, casting fresh doubts over the Government's target of increasing passenger traffic by 25 to 35 per cent in the coming decade.

He said that whereas 4,000 new carriages had been ordered since rail privatisation ­ a rate of about 1,000 a year ­ only 800 carriages were forecast to be ordered between now and 2010, equivalent to just 100 a year. This had major implications for train manufacturers such as Alstom and Bombardier but they were partly being compensated for by big orders from London Underground.