Talgo Drops Its Longannet Factory After Losing HS2

Talgo has dropped its plan for a train factory at Longannet in Fife, tying the collapse to its failure to win HS2 work. The Spanish train maker said in January 2025 that it had no plans on the old power station site. Local politicians had been told for years that the plant did not hang on that one English contract.

The former coal station closed in March 2016 with the loss of 230 direct jobs. Talgo’s factory was then sold as the replacement. The trains it needed were awarded in England, and the Fife pad stayed empty.

Talgo Tied the Fife Factory to HS2 From Day One

On 14 November 2018, Scottish Enterprise announced that Longannet was Talgo’s preferred UK factory, a plant envisaged to employ at least 1,000 manufacturing jobs. Construction was put at 18 months. The search had run for 18 months and started from about 30 possible locations.

Carlos de Palacio, then president of Talgo, called the Fife choice a hard one and a core part of the firm’s UK plan. Jon Veitch, Talgo’s UK director, said it was an exciting day for the company and for the UK. Paul Lewis, then managing director of Scottish Development International, said the workforce in Fife would help Talgo build a high-value rail plant.

Michael Matheson, then Scotland’s transport secretary, welcomed the news with a condition already in the open. He said a Longannet factory would bring a great number of new jobs to Fife should Talgo win the contract for HS2 rolling stock.

That was the public pitch. The money cited locally was about £40 million. The political wrapping was coal-closure repair on the Forth, plus talk of exports and of reopening the Dunfermline to Alloa line for passengers.

WHAT TALGO AND PARTNERS PROMISED

• The headcount: At least 1,000 jobs on the factory floor, with more during planning and build.
• The product: High-speed trains aimed at up to 235mph, sold as true UK manufacturing rather than kits from overseas.
• The site: The old Longannet coal yard and rail loop, with sea, rail and road links cited as the reason Fife beat other bids.
• The extra: A push to electrify and extend passenger services toward a new station on the site.

Fife Council backed outline plans for the Longannet land on 18 December 2019, on an application from Scottish Enterprise. Lewis called it a step toward turning a former fossil-fuels site to industrial use. Talgo UK, Scottish Enterprise and Transport Scotland had already signed a framework to set part of the ground aside as a manufacturing base.

1,000 Jobs Promised After Longannet Closed

Longannet had been Scotland’s last coal-fired power station. It shut on 24 March 2016 after Scottish Power lost a National Grid voltage contract and said carbon taxes and transmission charges had made the plant uneconomic. Fergus Ewing, then energy secretary, put the directly employed staff at 230 and set up a taskforce.

The factory pitch arrived more than two years later, while demolition was still running. For Kincardine and West Fife it was framed as a one-for-one industrial swap: trains for coal, a four-figure payroll for a lost three-figure one.

Councillors and the Coalfields Regeneration Trust treated the planning vote as the moment the swap became real. Talgo kept saying it wanted UK and export work, not a single bid. After it lost HS2, a company spokesperson said people had thought the plan was all predicated on that one contract, and that other British and world orders were in play.

Shirley-Anne Somerville, the Dunfermline MSP, later said Talgo had reassured everyone that the plans were not solely dependent on HS2. That reassurance is what ran on, long after the bid was dead.

The HS2 Trains Went to Durham and Derby

HS2 Ltd had put Talgo on its shortlist for a £2.75bn fleet in November 2017, alongside Alstom, Bombardier, Hitachi and Siemens. The package was for at least 54 trains at up to 225mph, able to run on the new line and on the existing network, including to Glasgow and Edinburgh.

In January 2021 HS2 told Talgo it would not go on to stage five of the contest. Talgo sued in March and April, arguing other bids had been allowed to change, that Alstom’s takeover of Bombardier had warped the field, and that the process showed apparent bias. HS2 disputed the claims. In June 2021 the two sides reached what both called a mutually acceptable resolution. Veitch said Talgo remained fully committed to the UK rail industry.

On 9 December 2021 HS2 Ltd awarded a Hitachi and Alstom joint venture the contracts worth around £2bn to design, build and maintain 54 high-speed trains. HS2 said the deal would support 2,500 jobs across the UK. Body assembly and first fit-out were sent to Hitachi’s plant at Newton Aycliffe in County Durham. Further fit-out and testing went to Alstom’s Litchurch Lane works in Derby. Bogies were to be made and maintained at Alstom in Crewe.

The first train was expected off the line around 2027, with passengers between 2029 and 2033. Fife was not on the build map. CAF and Siemens had also fought the procurement. The work went to factories that already existed in England.

WHERE THE HS2 FLEET IS BEING BUILT

By 2022, CAF, Siemens, Alstom and Hitachi already had UK plants. A new Scottish works needed a fat order that never came. Talgo’s own January 2025 line closed the argument it had tried to keep open.

Talgo said its Longannet plans were tightly connected with the HS2 project and with Talgo being part of it, which was no longer the case. It said it still had interest in UK rolling stock, including replacement of old trains on Scotland’s railways, but had no plans on Longannet.

Scottish Enterprise’s Land Option Ran Out in 2022

The formal no-go in January 2025 was late. Graeme Downie, then the West Fife and Coastal Villages councillor and later MP for Dunfermline and Dollar, said in 2022 that Scottish Enterprise had confirmed an agreed option to buy the land from Scottish Power had expired. Talgo answered that its commitment to Longannet and the wider UK remained solid, and that plans were contingent on a significant order or mix of orders.

Downie said in January 2025 that he had discovered in 2022 the site was not going ahead, and that this had already been clear for years. The public unravelling took more than six years from the 2018 launch, and just over three years from the HS2 award.

HOW THE FACTORY UNRAVELLED

1. 24 March 2016: Longannet power station closes, with 230 direct jobs lost.
2. 14 November 2018: Talgo names Longannet as its preferred UK factory.
3. 18 December 2019: Fife Council grants outline planning for redevelopment.
4. January 2021: HS2 drops Talgo from stage five of the train contest.
5. June 2021: Talgo and HS2 settle the legal fight out of court.
6. 9 December 2021: Hitachi and Alstom win the HS2 fleet. The same day, Longannet’s 183-metre chimney is demolished.
7. 2022: The option to buy the land from Scottish Power expires.
8. 29 January 2025: Talgo says it has no plans on Longannet.

Somerville called the confirmation hugely disappointing for West Fife. She said she would seek a meeting with Scottish Enterprise on the site’s future. Downie said he had already raised the ground in the Commons, with Scottish Power and with ministers.

What Occupies the Longannet Site Now?

The former power station is not a train plant. SP Energy Networks is connecting a new battery energy storage site to the grid there, and the old 275kV substation still helps supply around 2 million customers while newer substations are built at Kincardine and Glenrothes.

On 8 September 2026 the network operator said it would lay about 5.5km of underground cable between the battery site and the former power station, tying into an overhead line. Temporary lights on the A985 were due from 21 September 2026 for 26 weeks, with a 30mph limit. Carl Olivarius, a senior project manager at SP Energy Networks, asked drivers for patience while Maxwell Construction did the work.

In January 2026 a planning bid sought security upgrades at the Longannet substation, including gates, CCTV and lighting. The high-voltage hub sits north of the old station footprint. Once the newer substations are running, SP Energy Networks has said the aging kit can be taken out of service.

That is the industrial life the site still has: cables, switchgear and a battery hook-up. It is not 1,000 factory jobs, and it does not need a passenger station on a reopened Kincardine line. Hopes for that missing commuter link were bound up with the train plant. Without it, the line along the north bank of the Forth stays as it is.

West Fife’s Brownfield Still Has No Tenant

In June 2025 Somerville said she had met Scottish Enterprise about the ground and had been told the site was still being marketed, with Scottish Power engaged. Scottish Power called Longannet one of the prime brownfield industrial sites in the UK and said it was still looking for the best future use.

The confirmation that Talgo has dropped their plans to open a factory at Longannet is clearly hugely disappointing for communities across West Fife and beyond.

Shirley-Anne Somerville, Dunfermline MSP, January 2025

Paul Sweeney, a Labour MSP, put the empty plot in a wider charge about a just transition that never arrived, calling the site a derelict wasteland after the chimney came down and the factory was cancelled. Richard Hardy of Prospect, who had campaigned to keep the station open, replied that ministers had set up a taskforce after 2016 and that nobody who wanted to stay in work was left without it.

Those two claims can both sit on the record. The 2016 payroll was handled as a closure. The factory that was meant to follow it was something else: a bid site for an English high-speed order, held with warm words until even the land option had gone. Talgo went on building trains at its Spanish plants for other European fleets, including cab cars for Denmark’s DSB. Fife was not in that production plan.

Scottish Power still owns the pad. The battery cable is the work that actually started. The 1,000 jobs were never on a shift rota, because the order that would have paid for them went to Durham, Derby and Crewe.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Large Was the Factory Talgo Planned at Longannet?

Scottish Enterprise said the plant would occupy more than 70,000 square metres and take 18 months to build, with extra jobs in the construction phase. Fife’s 2019 planning consent covered about 74 hectares across five zones, with Talgo pencilled into the old coal yard and rail loop in Zone B.

Did Talgo Pick a Second UK Site Besides Longannet?

On the same day as the Fife announcement, Talgo named Chesterfield in England as the preferred site for an innovation centre to run an “all Britain” supply-chain strategy. That centre was never the factory, and it did not replace Longannet after the HS2 loss.

Who Owns the Longannet Land After Talgo Walked Away?

Scottish Power, owned by Iberdrola, still holds the land. The option Scottish Enterprise had agreed to buy it for the train plant expired in 2022, so Talgo never took title. In 2025 the energy company was still seeking a tenant for what it called a prime UK brownfield.

How Many Extra Jobs Were Claimed Beyond the Factory Floor?

Nicky Wilson, a Coalfields Regeneration Trust trustee, said at the 2019 planning vote that a Talgo plant employing 1,000 people would support a further 5,000 jobs. That wider figure was a campaign claim, not a headcount in Talgo’s or Scottish Enterprise’s 2018 notice, and none of those roles were hired.