The main railway trade show in the UK in 2007, ‘Railtex’ is taking place at the ExCel exhibition Centre in London Docklands between 20-22 February 2007.

Organised by Macbrooks Exhibitions, the 2007 event is at a new venue and nearly 450 trade exhibitors are attending. Virtually all the major trade suppliers to the rail industry ranging from entire vehicle providers such as Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens and Brush, down to the minor part suppliers attend, many with items of showroom hardware on display including power units, track repair equipment, signs and furniture.

This year no actual rail vehicles were exhibited, but Bombardier did show the full size mock-up of the new LUL Victoria Line stock displaying the stylish interior décor and design for the disabled area with fold down seats.

Many stands included models of new and proposed designs, on the Hitatchi stand provided more details of the Class 395 ‘Javlin’ units now under construction in Japan for delivery later this year for use on the Domestic HS1 services between London and Kent from 2009.

One of the key elements in total rail safety these days is the use of high quality driving simulators, using actual cab layouts and quality screen graphics which can impose any situation for a driver in a safe environment. A fully functional Class 91 cab was shown Corys T.E.S.S and provided the chance for would-be train drivers to ‘have a go’.

The main Railtex 2007 event was opened by Rail Minister Tom Harris, at the invitation of Lord Tony Berkeley, Chairman of the Railfreight Group.

GBRf held a fringe event at a nearby location and detailed their developments in the last year, Managing Director John Smith said that he hoped to be able to announce major new contracts later this year, especially with Royal Mail, as its existing contract to operate one Mail train in each direction per day over the West Coast Main Line expires in early summer. Recently GBRf has agreed a major facelift package for the 16 Class 325 units used on these services, which is to be undertaken at Bombardier Ilford.

John Smith is confident that a further 10 Class 66s will be ordered from EMCC later in the year for delivery by the year end, these will be painted in the new First Group livery and he said that construction space was already booked at the assembly plant. These locos will be deployed on the expanding portfolio of freight operations, especially coal traffic for which the first 10 coal hoppers built in Romania are now on their way by rail and the Channel Tunnel to the UK, these will be based in the North East and commence trial running in March for a service launch on 1 April.