First Great Western has welcomed the Government’s announcement to spend £4.5 billion building the new generation of intercity trains.

First Great Western managing director Mark Hopwood said: “This latest Government announcement is an essential piece of the jigsaw in improving passenger journeys across our network.

“Alongside the further electrification announced last week, these trains will give passengers a faster and more comfortable journey experience when travelling on the Great Western Main Line between London and destinations such as Oxford, Newbury, Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea.

“The new trains being built under the Intercity Express Programme (IEP) will replace many of our iconic high-speed trains that revolutionised rail travel in the 1970s with their 125mph top speed.

“I’m convinced IEP will deliver another revolution in passenger travel with the prospect of quicker journeys from 2017.

“The high-speed train has run on the Great Western network for more than 35 years serving the route and its passengers. They remain popular today and will continue to serve our customers over the next few years.”

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Corin Taylor, senior economic adviser at the Institute of Directors, said:

“It’s good to see the IEP contract finally signed.  Businesses will welcome more carriages and faster trains, particularly coupled with the extra electrification announced last week.

“It will be crucial to monitor the contract closely to ensure that the new trains arrive on time, on budget, and to the correct specifications.”

Chief executive of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) said:

“This announcement is good news for passengers as it will mean faster, more comfortable journeys and many more seats.

“This DfT-led procurement, however, has been contentious. Some of the earlier scope of the project has been changed because of subsequent Government decisions to electrify parts of the rail network.

“Train companies believe that the key to delivering better value for money is to ensure that they play a bigger role in shaping rolling stock solutions through the competitive franchising process.  It will help get things done more quickly and bring down costs, and we welcome the Government’s support for this approach.”

The start of the next Great Western franchise has been put back from next April to July 21.

The change of date is due to a delay in the DfT issuing invitations to tender to the various interested parties.

The £4.5 billion IEP contract for 596 carriages means that there is to be a fundamental shift, compared to other franchises, in the franchise bidding process.

It’s customary for bidders to be kept uninformed, even when it’s been obvious who, at a very early stage in the process, is actually going to be awarded the franchise. The huge importance of the IEP project means that Agility Trains will have to assist bidders in developing their proposals.

A planned six months of design development, before ‘design freeze’, for the new rolling stock will coincide with the franchise bidding, which could result in Agility having to contend with four bidders who could all have radically different opinions on how the Hitachi trains could be improved.

To avoid Agility wasting time on bids that have little chance of success, it is envisaged that the DfT may weed out the weaker bidders.

Tube cleaners have called a two-day strike which will begin on the day of the Olympics opening ceremony.

ISS and Initial tube cleaners and Carlisle DLR cleaners have voted for industrial action between 5.30 on Friday, July 27 and 5.29 on July 29.

As well as the dispute over Olympic payments, LUL staff are being instructed to take action over the attempted use of under-trained volunteers to make up statutory staffing numbers.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “While the likes of Jeremy Hunt, and the rest of the Government, are sitting in the well-padded VIP seats in the Olympics stadium as a nice little bonus our cleaners on the tube and DLR, who work round the clock in appalling conditions, are being treated like dirt over recognition for the extra workload they will carry from the millions of extra passenger journeys associated with the Games.

“Even at this late hour there is time for the cleaning companies, and Boris Johnson who hires them, to settle this dispute which is about ensuring an inclusive Olympics where everyone shares in the benefits.”

The Government has approved a £4.5 billion contract to build almost 600 railway carriages at a new factory in the north east of England.

In an announcement this morning, Transport Secretary Justine Greening said the project would create more than 900 jobs and secure thousands more.

Agility Trains, a consortium made up of Hitachi and John Laing, has been awarded the contract to build and maintain the trains under the Intercity Express Programme (IEP) – the project to replace the Intercity 125 trains, which were first introduced to Britain’s rail network in the 1970s.

Hitachi, which was first announced as the preferred bidder for the project in February 2009, will assemble an intercity fleet of 92 complete trains at a new purpose-built factory in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, with the first IEP trains expected to enter service on the Great Western Main Line in 2017 and on the East Coast Main Line by 2018.

The company will also locate its European rail research and development capabilities to the site, and construct new maintenance depots in Bristol, Swansea, west London and Doncaster.

Construction at the Newton Aycliffe site is expected to begin in 2013 and will be fully operational by 2015.

Transport Secretary Justine Greening said: “A new train factory is fantastic news for Britain and will be welcomed by everyone who wants to see a thriving UK manufacturing sector. It means 730 new skilled jobs created at the factory, 200 jobs in constructing the plant and thousands of jobs secured in the supply chain.

“The decision to build almost 600 new intercity train carriages is great for rail passengers who will experience faster and more comfortable journeys when travelling across Britain on the East Coast and Great Western main lines.

“Hitachi is the latest major international company to invest on this scale in Britain and I look forward to this new factory in County Durham following in the footsteps of Nissan’s successful car plant in Sunderland.”

The IEP train fleet will be comprised of electric and bi-mode trains, some five vehicles long and others nine vehicles. These will be faster accelerating than existing stock, and will offer the potential for more frequent services at a higher capacity.

Together with further electrification on the Great Western Main Line between London Paddington and Swansea, the new trains could cut 15 minutes off  journeys between the two stations and 21 minutes off services between Bristol and the capital.

Workers have reached the temporary bottom of the two huge launch shafts at Crossrail’s major tunnelling site in east London, ahead of tunnelling between Docklands and central London.

The larger of the two shafts is 30 metres in diameter and will be 44 metres deep when completed.

Construction has now commenced on two mined tunnels that will connect the two shafts.

Assembly of Crossrail’s third tunnel boring machine (TBM), Elizabeth, is now well underway.

The large blue cutterhead was installed earlier this week with the TBM now visible from the Docklands Light Railway.

During the coming months, the 150-metre machine will be fully assembled and tested before being lowered in sections into the two shafts.

Crossrail’s first TBM, Phyllis, is now 500 metres into construction of the first section of tunnel between Royal Oak and Farringdon.

More than 250 people are now working at the Limmo Peninsula site, with that number expected to peak at around 500 people at the height of construction.

Crossrail’s eastern tunnels will run for 5.16 miles (8.3km) from Docklands to Farringdon where they will join with the western tunnels from Paddington.

Crossrail’s eastern tunnels project manager, Peter Main, said: “We are now gearing up for the start of Crossrail tunnelling in east London. Work to construct two large launch shafts is now complete with assembly of the first of our tunnel boring machines now well underway.

“We understand how critical it is to limit the impact of Crossrail’s construction on local communities and have planned to transport the excavated material from the eastern tunnels by boat from Instone Wharf, removing the need for more than 30,000 lorry journeys in east London.

“We will also deliver 120,000 concrete tunnel segments by boat from Chatham Dockyard to further reduce our local impact.”

Trains will start transporting passengers on the Jaipur Metro railway system by June 2013, officials have said.

“Jaipur will soon have metro train networks service,” said Chief Minister Rajasthan.

The metro rail network has been developed by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) with an investment of $2 billion.

Close to 55 per cent of work on the first phase has been completed with the remainder on course to be completed to schedule.

The metro train system is being developed in two phases, out of which, the development of the first phase is further divided in to two legs, which include IA and IB.

Once both legs have been completed, metro trains will run between Mansarovar, Chandpole and Bari Chaupar.

The project also includes three underground and eight elevated stations in the first phase.

Under the second phase, metro trains will be able to run from Sitapura to Ambabari, covering a distance of 23.099 km.

However, the operation and maintenance of first phase would be carried by the newly-formed Jaipur Metro Rail Corporation (JMRC).

The Rajasthan state government has already transferred 23.69 hectare of land out the 50 hectares of land need to build the system.

Rolling stock for the first phase has been awarded to a public sector firm, BEML by DMRC.

The detailed project report (DPR) was done by DMRC, technical consultant for the project was Mott MacDonald and financial consultant was Deloitte.

The work contract for signalling and telecom supply has already been awarded by DMRC.

The second phase of the project will be developed on a public private partnership (PPP) model. For which four national and multi-national companies, including Reliance Infrastructure Limited, Gammon Infrastructure-Iridium Concession, Soma-ICF and Essar projects-Samsung C-NT, have been selected for requests for proposal (RFPs).