Time to put an experienced railway boss in charge at Network Rail

I was rebuked by my old friend Sir Peter Hendy, the chairman of Network Rail, after (on hearing of Mark Carne’s intended departure as chief executive) I tweeted that it was time for an experienced railway manager to be appointed to the job. Andrew Haines (ex of South West Trains) and Nicola Shaw (ex of almost everything) have already been mentioned

I have been at the wrong end of Hendy’s tweets and messages before, but his response in a series of now -deleted tweets suggested I had touched a nerve.

He responded first by saying that: “Leadership is about experience, ability and personality. The backhanded criticism of Mark that he somehow wasn’t as good as he could have been if he’d done 30 years on the railway is quite unfounded. He was given a bloody mess and has sorted it out extraordinarily well.”

While I appreciate that Carne was dealt a difficult hand and has tackled some of the problems well, the notion that Network Rail’s failings have all been sorted out is, well, laughable.

Carne refused to recognise that the excessive outsourcing in the organisation has resulted in a lack of skills which is at the root of its difficulties in keeping down costs. He seems to have shifted on this issue recently, when he recognised in my post-Christmas interview with him that the organisation lacked project management capability ( RAIL 844), but that’s only after years of failing to address the issue.

Clearly warming to the theme, Hendy then added: “I feel the same way about transport journalists - you long for one who deals in facts, not opinions, and has detailed knowledge, like whether HSTs have toilets that discharge on the track or not.”

I think that was a reference to my mistaken and over-optimistic belief that HSTs had all been fitted with retention tanks, but clearly Hendy thought I ought to be an expert on what happens to s**t - which, I confess, I am not.

He next made a point about safety, saying: “And the traditional tolerance of many railway people to a safety regime that has tolerated multiple deaths and serious injuries every year could only it seems have been challenged and actioned by someone from outside that community. Same on diversity.”

Frankly, I think that is an insult to the generations of railway people who have contributed to making the railways the safest they have ever been, and far safer than other forms of transport. I have never met a railway manager who does not put safety first. On diversity, too, Carne has not been the first to highlight what the rail industry has done, although he deserves credit for constantly raising the issue.

My principal point, however, was not to criticise or praise Carne, but to point out that any railway rookie will need (like Carne) to spend months touring round the network learning the ropes whereas an old hand would be able to hit the ground running. Things need to start happening fast on the railway to prevent the system degenerating into chaos.