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Originally Posted by denphone
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A similar thing happened when I worked for Network South East and they were rolling out the then new Networker trains. NSE were criticised for introducing trains that were too long for the platforms on a lot of stations, and the papers had several articles on the incompetence of the team involved. I was an administrator/general dogs body in the Quantity Surveyor's office (one of the offices critcised for incompetence), and the fact is that we were able to get a lot of necessary maintenance and upgrades done at all the stations as part of the Networker project. Not necessarily small upgrades and maintenance either. A lot of work was done at London Bridge, for instance, and even on my local rail line, they actually demolished two road bridges (which did need major work) and moved them. In one case, the new bridge was wider and meant that, for the first time in 10 years, trucks and buses could use the road again (they had been diverted due to the structural weakness of the old bridge).
We would not otherwise have had the money to perform these upgrades.
In fact, while I no longer work on the railways, I would argue that doing that was good value as commuters are arguably still benefiting from that expenditure, even though they've replaced most of the Networkers.