Re: Brisbane airtrain

["Al" <alpout@optusnet.com.au>]

> On a related issue, I discussed the problem of the high cost of buying new
> passenger cars with John Atkin, who was then, the Traveltrain Manager, at
QR. My
> suggestion was to obtain good quality second hand passenger cars, in
particular,
> diesel rail cars, from Japan, at a much lower cost that buying new
equipment. I
> also felt that QR could explore options such as India or China for the
purchase
> of rolling stock. The reason that I even raised the overseas "option" is
that
> Walkers have offered a "quote" to QR of six million dollars per two car set,
for
> diesel rail cars. That is way too high a price to be viable for QR to
consider!
> Mr Atkin was talking about obtaining rail cars to replace trains such as the
> "Westlander" and "Inlander".
>

Horses for courses, I suppose.  The new 2-car sets that the Hunter is supposed
to be getting are budgeted for $55M IIRC, for 7 sets.  That's just a smidge
under $8M per set.  I wouldn't think that the Endeavours/Xplorers were that
much cheaper, time taken into consideration.

Al