Once again, York is the proud and confident railway city. Business Editor RON GODFREY looks at what a difference the GNER franchise victory makes.

SUDDENLY, York, the railway city, has broken free from its nervous torpor.

It is not just GNER bosses who are punching the air over their York-based railway operation's long-awaited victory.

Leaders of smaller rail service companies in York are also cock-a-hoop over the announcement by the Strategic Rail Authority that GNER will continue to run trains from Scotland to London on the East Coast Main Line for at least the next seven years.

Some of the more astute of these firms are seizing the moment to call for meetings with GNER to offer their services.

After all, now there is so much in the offing as part of the franchise deal. For instance, GNER plans to invest £25 million in its railway stations along the route, another £5 million in its depot facilities, plus £75 million in high speed trains and all that means in terms of interior and exterior refurbishment and local catering and building contracts.

Craig Ellis, contracts manager for Owen Williams Railways, based in York's Holgate Park., said: "Put it this way. Until now, the uncertainty has meant GNER, understandably, relying on maintenance, rather than replacement. Now they will be looking for local suppliers to help them - tradespeople, brickies, roofers and various specialists."

His firm, which set up a stand- alone northern outpost in York, is one of those specialists, examining railway bridges, viaducts, tunnels, culverts, equipment and depot structures as well as - wait for it - stations.

"Any station improvements - extensions, replacement of roofs - will interest companies like ourselves, especially as the work will be guaranteed for at least the next seven years. I am now preparing a letter suggesting that we meet GNER to see how we can offer consultancy."

Already, Omnicom Engineering of York - a former Evening Press Business Of The Year - has had provisional discussions with GNER officials. Stirling Kimkeran, group technical director, said: "We have a range of products and services to offer them, given that we understand the problems of the railways and offer technological solutions."

These include products to track the real-time positioning of trains as well as route familiarising products for the training of train drivers using actual footage taken from their own camera-bristling trains touring the UK's entire rail network.

So, we seem to have emerged at last from a long, dark tunnel, which began with the disruption and uncertainty of the privatisation of the railways and climaxed in the collapse of ABB carriageworks on York's Holgate Park site in 1995. It meant the shocking loss of 750 jobs, along with the confidence and pride of a city which for more than a century has been regarded as being at the heart of the railway industry.

Then, just as new hopes were raised when Thrall Europa started a train-making plant on the same site, it turned out to be a one-contract phenomenon, with its US masters pulling out in 2002 after its deal supplying freight company English, Welsh and Scottish Railways ran its course.

At the same time, York's rail industry was struggling to come to terms with the Government dissolution of private rail infrastructure masters Railtrack and the emergence in its stead of Network Rail.

Throughout was threaded the eight year uncertainty of the future of the GNER franchise.

The franchise victory has wide-ranging implications, not just for the thousands of people who kept faith with York, but for the city's economy as a whole.

Bryn Jones, head of economic development for the City of York Council, said: "The franchise brings stability and certainty and that in turn will attract future investment."

That, he said, was not just because the East Coast Main Line is a major transport artery for the city, but also because GNER "has a very good and positive reputation which reflects business confidence in York as a place to invest in the future".

There was now a "critical mass" of railway employment in the city and "people benefit from being part of that... It is clearly a place to do railway business".

A spokesman for GNER agreed that the franchise win was good news for its existing and future contractors. Apart from the improvement of railway stations there were also plans for 900 extra car parking spaces along the route as well as parking for 400 more cycles. "These are contracts we will need," he said.

But if we are gaining jobs at one end, will we be losing them at the other - as GNER finds ways to pay the conditional £1.3 billion over the next ten years?

"That is not inevitable," said the spokesman, adding that discussions were now taking place with the rail unions to explore all the options. The ultimate answer, he said, lay in increasing passenger numbers.

Updated: 09:59 Monday, March 28, 2005