FASTLINE, the giant York-based track maintenance company, has won an £18 million contract to design and build the new Croydon Tramlink light rail project.

The company began planning and negotiating for the deal at its headquarters in Hudson House, Toft Green, before it was taken over by Jarvis Plc in September as part of a £63 million plan which had to be approved by the Office of Fair Trading.

Work on the Croydon Tramlink in Surrey is due to start in April and will mean Fastline building 38 kilometres of new track, refurbishing eight kilometres of existing railway and installing a further 4.5 kilometres of track in central Croydon.

The work will finish next February, in time for the tram network to be tested in September and then to go into public service at the end of 1999.

Fastline employs 1,200 people and has depots throughout the north and east of England, plus an extensive engineering workshop which carries out repairs to its own equipment and for other companies.

Geoff Bowman, Fastline's track service director in charge of the project, sees huge potential in this, the first light railway or tramway, project his company has won.

"We reckon that there are going to be 30 tram systems built all over Britain in the next 20 years and we are in at the start."

He said that Fastline would also soon be pitching for a multi-million pound project to built the Tyne and Wear Metro extension in Sunderland.

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