Railway churnalism: how many stories do I need about some new seats and a bit of carpet?

Cross Country in the UK has revealed the first of its rebuilt fleet of Voyager DMUs. These trains are getting some new carpets and some new seats. And some new paint.

Big deal! It is going to cost £75 million apparently.

How do I know?

Because in my rail news feeds there were stor..., ah no, sorry, copy and paste and sometimes machine translate of the Alstom press release, that appeared in Club Feroviar (in Romanian), Ferrovie.info (in Italian), RailTech (in French), IRJ (in English), Railway Gazette (in English) and LOK Report (in German). Rail Passion (in French) then managed to post about it days after everyone else, which wins a special sort of prize.

Which is more than the rail trade press has covered the Régiolis France Germany scandal, the Chinese built line in Serbia being constructed illegally story, or the reasons a line in northern Norway collapsed. (Régiolis was in my Newsletter a fortnight ago, and Serbia and Norway are in tomorrow's edition - all editions here).

All of these stories are actually more interesting and significant than a bit of carpet and some new seats in a two decade old fleet of DMUs that will still be cramped, noisy and uncomfortable and hence inadequate for the long distance services they serve in the UK (although to be fair that is not Alstom's fault). And there is nothing really noteworthy about renovating a fleet of trains mid-life - it happens all over the place, all the time.

So don't get me wrong, I am sure Alstom and Beacon and Cross Country did the best job they could. And they played the trade press very well. But this is not a very good look for the rail trade press. This is just churnalism.