Thrall Europa of York is braced to pitch for a massive order for rail freight wagons from Railtrack "in the near future". But the track owners are puzzled, saying tenders are not imminent.

Thrall, which has the capacity to double its wagon-making on its Holgate Road site says the vehicles will be needed by Railtrack to carry out its huge national infrastructure programme, taking ballast to track repairs.

James MacFadyen, Thrall Europa's general manager anticipates that his organisation will be one of many tenderers soon to be scrapping for the order.

But a spokesman for Railtrack said: "It is still at the consideration stage. We are not in a tender process or even starting a tender process for rail freight wagons".

The spokesman said that a notice had been sent out saying "that this was the type of thing we are looking to put through a tendering process but it has not begun by any stretch of the imagination."

Should Thrall win out when the tendering finally does begin, then it will be the first and only major UK order beyond the contract it signed with English Welsh and Scottish (EWS) for 1,500 wagons over five years, 1,000 of which have already been delivered on target over the past 20 months.

The Railtrack deal would be all the more welcome in the light of this month's decision by Thrall Car, the Holgate plant's Chicago-based masters, to buy CKD Vagonka Studnka, a wagon-making firm in the Czech Republic and to move its administrative headquarters from York into western Europe.

It follows Thrall Car's recent acquisition of Rail Project, a design-engineering firm in Poprad, Slovakia which specialises in bogies and related freight-wagon components.

Union critics like Brian Anderson the northern regional industrial organiser of the vehicle building section of the TGWU, fear that because of the unfavourable rate of exchange for sterling in Europe combined with low unit costs in Central Europe, the Holgate Road factory's status is now being undermined at a crucial time.

Namely that hopes that EWS would order a second tranche of wagons from Thrall to meet the expanding demand for freight in the UK have diminished as the growth in traffic fails to live up to early expectations.

There are fears that because of the long lead-in periods - as much as 15 months to complete designs and approvals alone - time is running out for Thrall Europa and the 200 people it employs.

But the argument is dismissed by Mr MacFadyen who takes the same view as Thrall Car vice-chairman, Michael E Flannery who sees York harmonising rather than competing with the new eastern European dimension to respond to customers throughout Continental Europe.

Mr MacFadyen said: "We do see having a market presence in Europe and manufacturing capability there as the access to a European supply chain which will help York in the long term"

It was wrong to conclude that York was being by-passed. "It gives us access to a much larger market than the UK only.

"York can and will play a part in that but it would have been very difficult in isolation to address the central European market only from York." It was always recognised that the loading gauge in Britain was different from Europe where bridges were higher and wagons wider. "We could build them here but we couldn't get them out."

There was interest in wagons from a number of different areas within the UK at a time when the market was still evolving. By now York had designed five wagon types for EWS.

"With every month that passes greater becomes our portfolio from which the big breakthroughs will eventually come."

see also 'Thrall aim off-centre?'

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