On Fri, 11 May 2007, Paul Scott wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...

Quick question - who paid for Evergreen 2?

Chiltern's parent company Laing paid for it to be built, but with a loan
backed by Network Rail IIRC, which meant Laing had the financial risk
during the project; and I believe when it was complete it was then
transferred to Network Rail for an agreed sum. I think it is called a
'Design, Build, Finance and Transfer' DBFT arrangement...

Aha. So in effect, NR paid for it, but only after it was built, and for a
fixed price, so Laing took the risk of going over schedule and over
budget. Except a loan backed by NR sounds like if it all went (or goes?)
tits-up, they end up footing the bill anyway!

Hmm. So it doesn't really represent private sector investment in the
network. Oh - unless the amount NR paid for it was less than it (was
planned to) cost, in which case it's shared.

Anyone know how that's working out so far?

There seem to have been a few false starts with new timetabling to make
use of the new capacity, though - there was a lot of correspondence with
passenger groups on their website a couple of months back...

I know nothing about Chiltern's market, but do they think they'll be able
to pull in more passengers once this is done?

tom

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