{"id":8260,"date":"2024-09-05T02:29:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T02:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/alstom-anxious-hitachi-hopeful-1\/"},"modified":"2024-09-05T02:29:31","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T02:29:31","slug":"alstom-anxious-hitachi-hopeful-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/alstom-anxious-hitachi-hopeful-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Alstom Anxious : Hitachi Hopeful (1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firstly : Metro-Cammell Moribund<\/span><\/p>\n

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Railway modellers, train enthusiasts and maybe a few normal people will recognise the venerable Class 101 diesel train seem in all quarters of the British mainland. They were made by …<\/div>\n
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… Metro Cammell at Birmingham.\u00a0 Historically, they built the Brighton Belle trains.\n
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The company had premises at Saltley, but the main site was at Washwood Heath. Actually, if you are to believe Google Maps it wasn’t at Washwood Heath!\n
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But Google Maps and Google Earth do show a huge scorched earth site just to the west of the northern end of Washwood Heath.<\/p>\n

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This is to be the mega depot for HS2 which, if Rishi and Keir have their evil way, won’t actually need all of it!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Here is a view of the actual MetCam depot …\n
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… and here is part of the aerial view spun round to match the works picture’s orientation.<\/p>\n

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The circular “holes” where once stood the two gas holders will help our readers’ geographical orientation – or even help them know where they are! Further help comes from Open Street Map.<\/p>\n

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Gas holder imprint is middle left! The road alongside the depot is Warren Road.<\/p>\n

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Leigh Primary School stands sentinel to one of the Metro Cammell entrance gates as was!<\/p>\n

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For a while he company was known as Metro Cammell Weyman and was also a manufacturer of buses …<\/p>\n

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… notably the MCW Metrobus.<\/div>\n
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Washwood Heath was also a major supplier of trains for London Underground.\n
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The company built the Blue Pullmans …\n
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… a whole heap of Networkers …<\/p>\n

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… and the Adelantes<\/p>\n

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These are now with Grand Central.<\/p>\n

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But Metro also once made much humbler train vehicles as here …<\/p>\n

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… with the Presflo cement and salt wagons.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The last trains completed before the site closed in 2005 were the Pendolinos (Pendolini?) for the West Coast main line.\n
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Way back in 1989 the business had been sold to GEC Alsth<\/span>om before it lost its “h<\/span>” to become plain Alstom.\n
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It is also worth noting that Metro Cammell exported trains to other far flung parts of the globe as here for the Hong Kong Metro.\n
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As a somewhat smaller project the two original MAGLEV cars for Birmingham Airport were built by MetCam just along the road.<\/p>\n

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Clearly the closure of Metro Cammell was a huge blow to Birmingham’s economy – nay, the nation’s economy – but is the same thing happening all over again?<\/p><\/div>\n

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More tomorrow.<\/div>\n
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What’s Going On?<\/span><\/div>\n

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Readers may wonder what is happening to fbb’s blog schedule. The “promise” a few days back was or a “two-parter” which has become a “four-parter”. Why?<\/span><\/div>\n

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On Sunday 8th the gruesome twosome of fbb and Mrs are setting off on a short Daish’s coach holiday. Destination is Llandudno. Return is on Thursday 12th.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The blurb for the Somerset Hotel (odd name for a gaff in North Wales??) offers Wifi in communal rooms only<\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n

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This sounds both ominous and inconvenient.<\/span><\/div>\n

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fbb is thus restructuring his blogging muse to ensure that something<\/span> is prepared in advance for blogs Monday 9th to Friday 13th incl. It also means that this weeks posts have been re-diddled to add extra pre-blogging preparation time.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Quite a challenge for the old bloke!\n
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\u00a0Next Anxious and Hopeful blog : Friday 6th Sept\u00a0<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Firstly : Metro-Cammell Moribund Railway modellers, train enthusiasts and maybe a few normal people will recognise the venerable Class 101 diesel train seem in all quarters of the British mainland. They were made by … … Metro Cammell at Birmingham.\u00a0 Historically, they built the Brighton Belle trains. The company had premises at Saltley, but the main site was at Washwood…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camcab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}