THE construction of a £50 billion high-speed rail route linking London to the north will be one of the biggest UK engineering projects of modern times.

If it is to be a success, it will take more than money, however. It will take engineering savvy and practical construction skills of a type we haven’t seen before. To make sure Britain has the knowhow to deliver the line, a new High Speed Rail College is to be built.

Its job will be to “provide the specialist training and qualifications needed for high speed rail and other infrastructure projects,” Skills Minister Matthew Hancock says. “It will offer the necessary technical training to make HS2 a success and ensure that it can be built by British workers with expertise in rail engineering, environmental skills and construction.”

The search is now on for a site for the new college. Well, that seems obvious to us. It should be right here in York.

This is a city with an extraordinarily proud railway history. Despite the loss of thousands of rail manufacturing jobs over the last couple of decades, the city – home to East Coast – still has 10 per cent of the total national workforce in the industry: and a staggering 71 per cent of the regional workforce.

The National Railway Museum is here: an already-existing and unmatched pool of skill and experience. We also have two first-rate universities – and, in York Central, an obvious and ideal location.

The criteria set out by Government for the new college include links to rail employers; links to other educational providers; a suitable site; and supporting the HS2 objective of rebalancing the economy from south to north. York scores on all of these. The whole city should now get behind a concerted bid to bring the college to the railway capital of the North, where it belongs.