February can be a tough enough month at the best of times, but you have to look especially hard right now to find a note of optimism in our engineering businesses.

The imminent impact from the changes to employer national insurance contributions looms large alongside the inflationary pressure on pay coming from national living wage increases; energy costs remain a vertical incline in the quest to be competitive outside the UK; and meanwhile, each morning starts with guessing where tariffs are headed today.

Scottish Engineering are privileged to run the Rail Cluster for Scotland, an initiative supported by Transport Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland, which is tasked with connecting small to medium-sized businesses in Scotland to opportunities in rail in Scotland and across the UK. As part of that cluster work, a recent visit to one of our engineering good news stories based in Kilmarnock was just the thing to cheer me up.

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Ministers urged to take urgent action over rail yard closure

Almost five years ago to the month, Wabtec Rail Scotland announced the closure of their operation at the iconic Caledonia Works, a site that has been manufacturing and repairing trains since the late 1800s under the name of Andrew Barclay and Sons. Wabtec stated the closure was due to a reduction in the volume of work rendering the business no longer sustainable, with the site put up for sale as Wabtec........

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