By Ian Walmsley
Pan Up
I was travelling home from London when I met up with a Porterbrook director who let me in on the plan to put diesel engines under Class 319s. ‘I’ll do you a favour’ I said, ‘I won’t report this, because it is [redacted]’. I assumed that once the real costs were worked out that would be the end of it, unless a 100-year asset life was assumed. To my amazement, at someone’s leaving party, I was told an order had been secured for my old stamping ground, South Wales. I made a Peroni-fuelled bet of £1 (my senses were not that impaired) that the trains would not be in on time, if indeed they ever went into service at all.
