In the 1980s, British Rail had a catchphrase: We’re getting there. Hopeful but, in the end, a failure. The state-owned railway operator was broken up and privatised in the 1990s.
China’s railway industry might have a use for the slogan now. On Thursday, state-owned locomotive maker China CNR confirmed it had won a $567m order for rolling stock for Boston’s subway system, the ‘T’. The deal is the first significant infrastructure win for a Chinese company in North America.
CNR is China’s largest Hong Kong-listed railway equipment manufacturer by revenues, squeaking past CSR with sales of $15.7bn last year. The Boston deal amounts to a mere 3.6 per cent of this figure and, with delivery starting in 2018, will take several years to arrive. So, as a first step into the North American market, the win is more sentimentally than financially significant.