Thanks Grahame, I've booked. Will be interesting to hear Hitachi's version of events.

Yes, and it was very disappointing. The content of the talk had very little to do with the title, it was mostly a puff piece about Hitachi and how it was supplying (mainly metro) trains around the world and that it had bought Ansaldo-Breda and so supplied high speed trains to Italian operators.

The conclusions I drew were:

• Hitachi had seriously underestimated the effort needed to set up an assembly and support organisation for the IEPs^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.)/IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train) in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). The speaker made several references to it being a 'billion pound start-up'
• No mention was made of the difficulties being faced during the trains' introduction
• The sensors in each train monitor some 40,000 channels. Hitachi is still working with other 'members of the Hitachi family' to find ways of generating information from these data which could be useful in helping maintenance planning and staff to do their job. Because of the emphasis that was made on learning how to use the data it seems to me that it is very likely the Shinkansen trains in Japan don't do as much self-monitoring.
• A question on the pantograph incident which brought the wires down in the London suburbs was stonewalled - 'there is an on-going investigation with Network Rail...'.

I learnt nothing which had not already been published.