Siemens opens £200m Rail Village in Goole
At the official opening of the 67-acre railway manufacturing facility in East Yorkshire, Siemens also announced a further £40m investment in the region.
The Rail Village will produce all of Siemens’ future UK train orders, including its battery trains, as well as the already commissioned Piccadilly Line trains for Transport for London (TfL).
The facility intends to serve other global markets by 2030.
Siemens Mobility trains currently make up almost a quarter of UK passenger trains, and it is estimated that this facility will support 700 high-skilled jobs in the region.
Siemens Mobility also announced a further investment of up to £40m in a bogie assembly and service centre.
A bogie is the chassis or framework that carries a wheelset, attached to the underside of a train.
The centre will expand Siemens Mobility’s current capabilities to overhaul bogies from UK trains, including the 3,224 strong fleet of vehicles (572 trains) it maintains in the UK, and include production lines for assembling ones for new trains, a first for Siemens in the UK.
It is due to be operational towards the end of 2026.
The opening event was attended by the secretary of state for transport, Louise Haigh, and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
Transport secretary Louise Haigh said: “This impressive, world-class facility will be transformational to Goole and its people, providing a boost to the region’s economy and supporting hundreds of skilled jobs.
“Its opening demonstrates the importance of high quality, long-term investment to pave the way for employment and growth.”
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, said: “This train manufacturing facility in Goole is a fantastic example of the expertise we don’t have and how investment in London benefits the whole country.”
Sambit Banerjee, joint CEO at Siemens Mobility, spoke about the investment’s potential to nurture the next generation of trains in Britain: “We’ll assemble 80% of London’s new Piccadilly line trains and all future Siemens trains for the UK including our Verve battery train here in Goole, and I’m pleased that we are supporting the local supply chain in the process.
“Our further investment in the bogie assembly and service centre will only add to our ability to transform rail and transport for everyone, right here in Goole.”
The Goole Rail Village consists of the main train manufacturing facility, which assembles and commissions trains; the components facility, where Siemens maintain gearboxes, traction motors and other parts for train and tram fleets; the logistics centre warehousing facility; and the Rail Accelerator and Innovation Solutions hub for Enterprise (RaisE) business centre, all of which will now be joined by the bogie assembly and service centre.
The new Bogie Service Centre will force 200 staff out of work at the current location in Lincoln. A 120 mile round trip daily is not financially viable or reasonable to expect and employee to do. So it will be 200 redundancies for Lincoln City.
By Anonymous
This is not good news for Lincoln where the current Bogie Service Centre is, as now there will be 200 employees expected to either be made redundant or travel 120 miles per day at there own cost. The new facility could have been built on land around Lincoln easily. Not a good look for Siemens public image.
By Anonymous
Business or commercial accounting will show money saved by Siemens, but economic accounting (not yet a word in English (which is why nobody knows what it is) will show a huge loss and further social costs (not only the jobs lost) for the Lincoln economic area.
By Anonymous