Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, July 14th, 2008 - 39 comments
Categories: labour, national, spin, transport -
Tags: 'new zealand sucks' campaign, Kiwirail
Yesterday on Agenda, SOE Minister Trevor Mallard said that the Government was undertaking an exploratory study to see whether the factory that currently repairs trains could also be used to assemble trains. If its economical, specialised parts would still be imported but a major manufacturing job would take place in New Zealand, building up New Zealand’s manufacturing skill base, saving money, and reducing the current account deficit.
This used to happen back before privatisation of rail. At the time the locomotive assembly industry was protected from foreign competition (local assembly was also required in a range of other industries). That was economically inefficient and meant, at the end of the day, Kiwis ended up paying more for manufactured goods.
There is no suggestion of returning to such a system. The Government is simply researching whether local assembly would be competitive with imports. It is fantastic to see them thinking in such an innovative manner to find ways of boosting the local economy and improving a vital, energy efficient transport system.
So, it is terribly disappointing that National has come out against the idea even before the report is complete. National’s Gerry Brownlee simply states that it would be impossible for Kiwis to assemble trains at lower cost that complete imports without protectionism. Automatically, National believes we can not do as well as other countries; that New Zealand can’t compete.
Guess that ‘ambitious for New Zealand’ thing is just so much empty spin.
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cheers, Andrew. very informative
Sure, the workshops are rebuilding old locos using the manufacturers’s standard upgrade packages for that model of locomotive. I doubt they’re going out on a limb there.
Most of the locomotives currently in NZ are just stock US models adapted slightly for our gauge which is also shared with parts of Australia.
I would like to see if the proposal said that major parts like bogies and underframes were going to be manufactured locally, as these are the major cost saving areas (if any) due to their size and weight. Part of the reason I’m skeptical is that the workshops have not built new parts like these since the 1960s, and have substantially downsized since.
Building major components locally is going out on a limb, because that area has been a real source of trouble for many an assembler where they don’t have the experience of locomotive building.
As I noted no mainline locomotives have been assembled in NZ new since the steam era. It only happened before because the workshops were run politically without any regard for cost. If it happens again then it is probably going to be for political reasons because that’s what the railways are going to be set up like again.
So Mallard thinks the railways should do what the truck and bus industry does. Will wonders never cease? Only real question is will it work efficiently and effectively with only one company doing the work and only one company buying the product?
I did all that foamer thing for quite a few years, got sick of it, posting in forums like these is much more interesting. the rail community can be very insular. Who wants to talk numbers all day long.
Now some foamer’s facts, the oldest mainline locomotives in NZ were brand new in the mid 1960s, the Queensland locomotives rebuilt as DQ which operate various services and some of those DAs rebuilt as DC class go back that far.
In the same era the old NZR built 52 of the DSC class shunter which was pretty much a local effort as a lot of the steelwork and bogies and the like were all built in NZ and the electrical parts were imported. These things trickled out roughly at 10 a year and were built in two shops so from that it is a reasonable assumption that each shop was only building one at a time. One of those shops was Addington which no longer exists.
In bringing a kit of parts from overseas to assemble a locomotive the heavy parts are things like the engine, bogies, traction motors, and probably the underframe which are all specialised bits that could be very hard to make in NZ and for which the local capacity may not exist any more given the state of our engineering industry. If these are all imported fully built then there is perhaps a small space saving but not a lot of weight saving so how much would you actually save on the shipping cost.
The workshops are geared up to overhaul all these components and the sheet metal parts like the carbody/hoods/cabs are relatively straightforward to manufacture as it already happens in the NZ workshops as we know. Whether the workshops have enough capacity to get these things into service as quickly as they are able to be built overseas and shipped to NZ, given the builders have big factories worldwide that do this sort of thing all the time, is one of the biggest questions of the whole equation. We are told that these things are desperately needed but I guess a few more years won’t hurt as long as Mallard can get the votes of local people in his electorate.
And that really typifies what sucks about this whole rail buyback deal, that is the political stratification of it, the fact that it cost so much money, there was no limit, there is no limit on how much money Labour is prepared to spend on the rail system because they like taking our money and spending it on everything under the sun. The rail went into the sunset back in the 1980s when the politicians realised they couldn’t continue to prop up an inefficient monopoly. Labour is going to try to shut out that reality by creating a new political railway system again, Mallard can buy votes in Hutt by promising a new subsidised scheme at the workshops there.
I’m quite looking forward to National’s rail policy. Probably something like contracting out the running of the operation. There’s a big company out there that has the expertise to do it. The Labour party hates them but they’re just a bunch of politicians so who cares.