Are British workers incapable of building these trams?

Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive has ordered 28 new trams as part of the £575m project to build new lines to Oldham and Rochdale, Droylsden in Tameside, and Chorlton in south Manchester.The trams will be built by rolling stock manufacturer Bombardier in partnership with Vossloh Kiepe and are costing just over £2m each. The new model of tram already operates in several European cities, including Cologne and Bonn.Philip Purdy, GMPTE’s Metrolink director, said: "We're expecting passengers to make more than 90,000 journeys on the Metrolink network every day when the extensions open so we'll need lots of extra trams. We've got a construction team in place to build the three new lines and I'm pleased we've now reached the stage where we can place an order for new state-of-the-art trams to run on them. I'm looking forward to seeing the new model of tram become a familiar sight across Greater Manchester."Last week, GMPTE appointed the M-Pact Thales consortium to design, build and maintain the new Metrolink lines. Construction work is due to start early next year and the lines are expected to begin opening from spring 2011 onwards.GMPTE ordered 12 new trams from Bombardier last year to relieve overcrowding on the existing Metrolink network, and provide a new service to mediacity:uk in Salford Quays (Transport Briefing 21/11/07). The latest order will take the total number of trams on the Metrolink network to 72.Up to 200 passengers will be able to travel on each of the new trams, and wide double doors will make it easy for people with wheelchairs or buggies to get on and off them. Bombardier will design and manufacture the trams at its sites in Bautzen in Germany and Vienna in Austria. The warehouse now known as Parkers in Dukinfield used to be a centre of railway engineering excellence. Parts of the famous Woodhead electrics were built there. It is sad to see us importing nearly every manufactured product we use when we were until fairly recently world leaders in this field. Tameside Citizen