Although Network Rail has offered retraining and redeployment guarantees, Cash said he was "in no doubt that this leaves operations and maintenance members extremely vulnerable".
But Russia had earlier said it was preparing to send marines to Syria in case it needed to protect personnel and remove equipment from the naval maintenance facility.
Incidentally, the unheralded news from Monday's announcement might be that spending on maintenance is going to be less than planned for: Action for Roads talks of another £12bn for maintenance; Monday's Road Investment Strategy speaks of "more than £10bn" additional money for maintenance of national and local roads.
The government will today propose the biggest overhaul of child maintenance for a decade, arguing that the current system encourages conflict between parents.
Ministers claim there is currently a £4bn arrears in maintenance payments from non-resident parents.
The minister said the latest figures showed there were 3.5 million children from broken homes, with almost half having no effective maintenance arrangements.
A further 25 additional personnel will provide training in other critical skills, including medical, equipment maintenance, manoeuvre support for bridging and crossing trenches and information operations.
In a separate statement, he said: "The events over the Christmas period highlighted the unacceptable impact on the travelling public when plans go wrong … We have an obligation to manage the essential safety maintenance and renewal activity that is required and we need to do this in a manner that minimises the overall impact on society at large.
High maintenance micro-management has gone because I no longer care what others think.
Beyond this that he is in his own way a victim of circumstance, an under-finished finisher who simply needs a little overdue affectionate maintenance.
According to analysis by IHS Jane's, Arab states may seek to reduce their reliance on individual defence contractors in case an internal crackdown leads to an arms embargo that would deny access to maintenance, upgrades and spare parts for military equipment.
