Cardiff, September 12 — The Global Centre of Rail Excellence, the planned rail testing facility in Wales, has spent £70 million (about US$88 million) of public money without laying a single yard of its main testing track, according to a BBC report. The project was meant to be operational in 2025. It has now slipped to 2030.
The design calls for two electrified tracks of 4.3 miles (7 kilometres) each, looping around a site roughly the size of Gibraltar.
What the money bought
The £70 million (about US$88 million) has gone into the site without major track construction beginning. That is the central finding of the BBC’s reporting, and it frames the decision now facing ministers. GCRE says the full development, including other facilities beyond the two loops, could create more than 1,000 jobs.
None of those jobs exist yet.
Plaid Cymru inherits the bill
The scheme passed into the hands of Plaid Cymru after the party won the Senedd election in May. The party now owns both the project and the question of whether to keep paying for it. Simon Jones, GCRE’s chief executive, did not pretend otherwise.
There is demand in the rail industry for what the company would provide, he said, “but we can’t carry on using public money on this forever so a decision needs to be made.” Jones also confirmed “detailed conversations” with an energy and data centre company. He declined to name it, citing commercial confidentiality.
GCRE wants those talks concluded this year so a contract can be signed. The condition he attached to that contract is the crux of the story. “And we need to be in a position where we know whether the railway is going ahead or not at the moment we sign that contract,” Jones told BBC Politics Wales.
He sketched the upside if both halves fall into place. “If the government decides this is something that it wants to do, if we are able to execute the contract with the data centre partner, then five years from now we could be in a situation where we see trains running around this site.”
What happens next
Two things must happen for the railway to proceed, by Jones’s own account. The Welsh government must decide it wants the project, and GCRE must close the data centre deal. Neither is done.
The delay from 2025 to 2030 is a five-year setback for a facility intended to strengthen the UK’s rail testing capabilities and bring jobs to Wales. The BBC report sets the tension plainly: public spending has carried the project this far, and private investment is now expected to carry it further.
The identity of the data centre company has not been released. Nor has a timetable for the government’s decision. Watch for the contract, and for whether Cardiff says yes before it is signed.
