From enthusiast to managing director
In the concluding instalment about his life on the railways, GWR managing director Mark Hopwood CBE talks to Tony Miles about the Privatisation years right up to the discovery of cracks on the IET fleet in May this year.
In 2000 Mark was working for Railtrack, in a role that involved liaising with franchise bidders, so he assumed that his call to a meeting with First North Western (FNW) MD David Franks in November of that year would be to discuss the refranchising of Wales and Borders, but it soon became clear that David had an ulterior motive. Having been won by Great Western Holdings and then bought by First Group, FNW was in trouble; service delivery was poor, cancellations were rife and at one point the Oldham Loop line had no services at all for several days. The franchise was on the brink of being terminated and David Franks had been brought in to turn the business round. Having worked with Mark at Reading some years earlier David knew he could play a key part in delivering the vital improvements. “I want to talk about you coming to do a job for me,” was the offer, and in March 2001 Mark became operations director at FNW. “For me personally that was a massive step,” he recalls “I’d been in a reasonably important job operationally at Thames Trains, but it was a modest-sized business; I’d gone off to Railtrack where I was working in a team and suddenly I’d moved from where I lived 200 miles away to
Manchester and at 29 years old was managing 307 stations and 2500 staff.”
Although some of FNW’s problems had been brought under control by the time Mark arrived, the role was still seen as something of a poisoned chalice within the industry, however he feels that this may have been to his advantage at the time.
“If it had been seen as a lucrative operations director’s job they probably wouldn’t have come after me to do it!” he reflects, recalling that his role was considerably larger than the title suggested.
Responsibility
“Although it was called operations director it was pretty much a chief operating officer’s job with all the train crew, the stations and quite a lot of the head office functions as well. It was a big responsibility and it was really sink or swim time! The fact that people like David have been willing to take risks was obviously good for me, but it was an excellent learning opportunity. I met some fantastic people up there, like Kathryn O’Brien whom I appointed as a general manager permanently, and we worked really hard up there to sort out a lot of the issues around performance.” At the time the FNW network was extensive, from Holyhead in the west, with Carlisle and Birmingham at the north and south extremities, yet reaching as far as Wakefield to the east in Yorkshire. “I had three fantastic years, really enjoyed it, learnt a lot and hopefully improved one or two things along the way.” Mark made sure he got to know the network: “My detailed knowledge of the geography was nowhere near what it had been from the Thames Valley so I had some learning to do. “I remember a cab ride one night on a service back from Wigan to Manchester Victoria via Atherton; it wasn’t long after Ladbroke Grove, so there had been a lot of work going on around things like defensive driving techniques. We left the last station on the line, heading towards Windsor Bridge North Jct, and went past the single yellow signal. As we passed it the driver put his hand on the power handle and opened it up to full power; I clearly had a very alarmed look on my face. The driver looked at me, smiled and said ‘I think you’re probably wondering why I’ve just opened up the power handle having gone past a single yellow, but you don’t want to ask me do you?’ I told him he was spot-on and that it was exactly what I was thinking. ‘Ah, well, he said, you might like to know the next signal is two
and-a-half miles away and we’ve got a 1-in-80 gradient to get there, so a bit of power might be helpful.’ Things like that are obviously how you learn as you go along.”
Whilst Mark arrived after the running of the successful farewell trains, in conjunction with The Railway Magazine, which marked the end of the Class 309 EMUs and Class 37 loco-hauled trains, he still had a chance to mark the end of the Class 101 DMUs – a long drawn out affair as the replacement Class 175s from Alstom were late arriving and seriously troublesome in their early days.
Farewell
As well as reintroducing loco-hauled trains over both the North Wales Coast line, in the hands of Class 47s, and between Blackpool and Chester top and tailed by Class 31 locos, Mark had to ensure the 101s soldiered on into their 47th year enabling a farewell tour on December 21, 2003, taking three sets to Blackpool and Barrow-in-Furness, getting local TV coverage in the process. On their final day in service, December 24, 2003, with celebrity green set 101685 Daisy – the oldest train in passenger service on the UK mainland – apparently tied to some local duties around Manchester, Mark’s trademark ability
to make things happen resulted in what he described on the day as ‘an accidental diagram swap’; Daisy was off over the Hope Valley line to Sheffield one last time and after a bit more TV stardom became the final 101 in passenger service as the set worked the 21.10 Rose Hill Marple to Manchester Piccadilly.
Years later Mark reflects on how good it has been to have a mix of enthusiasts within the railways and, as long as they don’t let their passions get in the way of doing the ‘day job’, they can be a great asset.
“It’s great fun to run a train that like that; there was a time in BR where people who had an interest in the railway had to keep it to some extent in the closet and it was frowned on, which is quite odd actually because a number of those very senior people in BR like Dr John Prideaux, Chris Green and others are all rail enthusiasts in one way or another. People were so worried about being seen to be some sort of enthusiast for rail, but ever since I’ve known anything about the railway, functions like train planning and control offices have always been populated by many people with some railway interest or enthusiasm. It was the same at FNW when I was there and so why not allow that to go on; and believe it or not when we sent Daisy to Sheffield quite a few people turned up at the ticket office and bought a ticket for it, so we did make some money out of it as well as it being a little bit of fun.”
After three years at FNW, it was clear that the franchise was at an end and while First Group’s designated MD for TransPennine Express, Vernon Barker, was keen for Mark to stay on as operations director for the new business, the idea didn’t appeal to him. “I don’t think it had occurred to Vernon that I would do anything other than move to TPE, but they were going to have separate operations and customer service teams.
“So not only was it a much smaller business, but the jobs were much smaller and so I didn’t really find that attractive at all to be honest. I went to a conference in London and ended up sitting next to Dominic Booth, who had just been promoted from MD of Londonlines up to the divisional director’s job for National Express South; of course David Franks was the divisional director for National Express North by now. Dominic was looking for someone to take over as operations director for Londonlines, which comprised c2c, WAGN, Silverlink County and Silverlink Metro and with a set-up very similar to the one I’d been enjoying at FNW.
Speed
“Well, it was too good an opportunity and while people in the north may not like to hear it, the railway in London is just a lot busier and a lot more high profile, so in February 2004 I took that job, running probably 25-30% of the London commuter business, and did so for two years.”
One major effort during those years was a drive to improve train performance, especially on the East Coast Main Line. It enabled
Mark to compare very different approaches to the removal of speed restrictions, which were having a major impact on WAGN services. It was well reported in the following years that long distance operator GNER was less enthusiastic about this, with their
CEO Christopher Garnett suggesting at one point that the compensation payments from Network Rail were key to the business remaining profitable. “Some of my team really engaged with Network Rail and we got every speed restriction lifted; it did involve a lot of nagging! But while I think GNER was a fantastic business, you never saw anyone from GNER asking about the speed restrictions and they did quite well financially out of the Schedule Eight compensation regime. “For me I think it was a matter of professional pride, but also what we saw as punctuality improved was revenue really took off, and actually commuters felt much more comfortable coming in using the product. We saw a lot of house building along the route and I think it was helped by the fact the railway was performing very well.” Mark’s influence paid off and over two years, across all of the Londonlines companies, performance improved. However, the franchise map was changing, National Express lost WAGN to First Group and as First Capital Connect was set up First’s head of rail at the time, Andrew Haines, tried to recruit Mark into the new business. National Express countered by offering him the job as managing director of Londonlines, which would incorporate Gatwick Express from April 2006. It wasn’t all plain sailing; a complex timetable change at c2c in December 2006 went disastrously wrong, overcrowding led to a collapse of performance in the peaks and customer anger was palpable. At one point, out on the route to see the problems for himself, Mark was pinned to the wall at Laindon station by a large group of angry commuters. In an almost unprecedented move Mark admitted the company had got things wrong and on December 21, 2006, c2c announced that the old timetable would be reinstated in the New Year. At the time Mark told the local press: “A lot of people were clearly unhappy with the changes and we had to take notice of that. We recognise there have been a lot of concerns and, after a great deal of thought over the weekend, have decided to revert to the old timetable. We would like to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience they have experienced. We put together a new timetable, which we thought would improve the service, but have received a lot of complaints and have
to accept what the majority of customers want.”
Mark continued in the role until January 2008 and there are plenty more stories from that period but not room here to recount them all.
With preparations underway for the creation of LOROL (London Overground Rail Operations Limited), a number of important guests, including Peter Hendy and several senior railway journalists were being taken on a tour of lines around London in the route learning car ‘Caroline’ powered by a Class 33.
At one junction the train came to a halt as the signal showed the points set for the wrong line. A phone call to the signaller initially brought a response that suggested setting the correct route would be ‘too difficult’. Guests near to Mark recall him taking the phone and politely informing the signaller “Would you like me to come up and show you how to do it?”
Remarkably, within seconds, the aspects changed and the required road was set. “We ended up with the right result,” Mark recalls, “but it’s a technique that I’ve had to use quite a lot over the years because people say ‘oh we can’t do something’ and I say ‘well, I think you can do it’.
Obviously it is slightly irritating sometimes, because you think ‘well why didn’t we just do that in the first place?’ It worries me that, perhaps, if someone didn’t know the capabilities of the system or the network, things that could be done might never happen. We do have to challenge people, ask the difficult questions and push the boundaries.”
Swansong
Mark’s wide-ranging experience also came to the fore on March 21, 2007 when he visited Upminster station to witness the last-ever ticket to be issued via an ‘APTIS’ machine. As press representatives discussed with the member of staff on duty how the moment would be captured, passengers waiting at the window were briefly ignored, until Mark stepped into the breach and without being noticed for some time, took over sales duties; completely familiar with the equipment and causing a few raised eyebrows from passengers who perhaps wondered why the duties of the MD included selling tickets at their local station!
The end of the Silverlink franchise on November 10, 2007, gave Mark one more chance to ensure its last day was memorable, as a special train branded ‘Silverlink Swansong’ saw Class 50 No. 50049 Defiance leading an eight-coach train tailed by 37410 out of Euston and over the DC lines to Watford Junction before taking in much of the Silverlink network including Barking, Clapham Junction, Bletchley Depot, the operable section of the line via the Bletchley flyover towards Calvert and the Siemens depot at Kings Heath, Northampton.
Mark continues to insist: “To this day I don’t know how a 50 and a 37 ended up on that, getting a train routed through Wembley carriage depot and full throttle on the 37 with exhaust rising then slowly descending and covering the crisp fresh line for the ScotRail sleepers in a layer of diesel soot and fumes!”
This tour was actually a repeat of a similar run the week before, had sold out in hours – although that one only saw Class 37s used for traction!
The days of Londonlines were over, Silverlink had gone and in April 2007, the DfT had announced that Gatwick Express was to become part of the Southern franchise from June 2008. However, at First Great Western things were not going well and there were calls for the franchise to be terminated. FGW
managing director Andrew Haines decided to have another go at recruiting Mark. The offer to become performance director and deputy MD, on a route Mark knew so well, was not only too good for him to refuse, but with his proven ability to deliver significant improvements in performance, his recruitment was actually a formal part of the remedial plan presented by First Group to the DfT that allowed it to retain the franchise.
Improvements
“It was a big business with a lot of problems,” Mark reflects. “It had signed a franchise agreement containing a number of things that, quite frankly, were not deliverable or were exceptionally unpopular. Performance was rock bottom and the relationship with Network Rail was very poor. I remember the list of the 10 most overcrowded trains in the country was published and all of them were Great Western services. Stakeholders were very unhappy and MPs were screaming for the franchise to be removed.”
Mark got to grips with the business and improvements came rapidly, however Andrew Haines had decided to leave the railways for the CAA, the offer to take over as MD saw Mark stepping up to the new role from December 2008.
Early gains included agreements to return trains placed in store under the original contract and the arrival of additional capacity from other operators. Better engagement with staff who saw the company, right up to the MD, was committed to putting things right, led to significant improvements in performance and punctuality, higher scores in the National Passenger Surveys and a big improvement in staff morale.
In February 2010, barely two years after Mark joined FGW, it was named Train Operator of the Year in the Rail Business Awards; the first of many accolades under Mark’s tenure which included Rail Business of the Year in February 2018 and for him personally, Industry Leader of the Year in February 2017, also at the Rail Business Awards, and later that year Outstanding Personality at the National Rail Awards. As well as performance improvements, investment in the company’s rolling stock and stations also played a key role.
As Mark reflects: “I was really proud to move the business forward and obviously Great Western is a very different business today.”
One very significant moment came on October 20, 2015 when FGW became
Great Western Railway, with a new livery and branding that enabled the company to build ever more strongly on its connections with the region it serves.
“The thing I really love about Great
Western is that we’re not just a train operator, we are THE train operator. Okay, we do interface with other companies but for a lot of people in the Thames Valley and Bristol and
Devon and Cornwall, Great Western provides all their trains, local or intercity.
Investment
“It is a special business and it’s great to have seen so much investment come through, not just in the rolling stock and the depots, but the massive investment in stations including the complete rebuilding of Reading, double tracking the South Cotswolds line and parts of the North Cotswolds route, even the passing loop on the Falmouth branch. It’s all that type of stuff that has enabled us to run a much better service and deliver the things that people want, and we have the reopening to Okehampton that shows the work is continuing.”
It’s not all been plain sailing on GWR; the electrification scheme was cut back and that in itself created new challenges for Mark.
“I guess everybody in Network Rail, in DfT and beyond would accept that things like the electrification programme could have gone
much better if we’d approached it in a different way. It was very concerning for us, as the train operator, to find bits of electrification cancelled without really any thought being given at all to the rolling stock strategy.
“There was probably a view in Government that Great Western would sort all this stuff out for them. We were determined not to just sit back and complain, so when the electrification to Bristol, Swansea and Oxford was cancelled we just put our foot forward very quickly and said ‘all the trains will have to be bi-mode, you’re going to have to uprate the engines to a higher power setting and we’re going to need to keep more diesel trains’.
“We eventually convinced the DfT to allow use to keep 16 short HSTs and we successfully changed the EMU strategy from a planned mix of 365s and 387s to an entirely 387 fleet, with some additional units. Of course we’ve amended the fleet strategy, subsequently with things like the 769s coming in, which have been a lot harder work to get there than we’d like!”
The introduction of GWR’s new fleet of Class 800 IETs, between October 2017 and 2019, was not only delivered with relatively little disruption but in true Mark Hopwood style the last HST service to serve London Paddington was marked appropriately on
May 18, 2019, with power cars in various liveries, including one in the original 1976 BR Inter-City 125 colours.
Sabbatical
After making such an impact at GWR, it was probably no surprise when FirstGroup asked Mark to make a temporary move to SWR for a year from January 2020, in which he was tasked with ‘restoring punctuality and reliability as well as addressing key issues around industrial relations and resolving the future of the franchise’. Indeed, with his expertise around performance, it was no surprise back in October 2016 Mark was asked to take over as chair of the National Performance Task Force (NPTF), the cross industry group that was working to develop cross business plans to address punctuality, reliability and train plan issues across all operators.
Stepping into a role previously held by David Franks and Chris Burchell was probably a natural move for Mark and undoubtedly the NPTF led a number of positive improvements.
“In every job that I’ve ever done, in performance terms, I’ve always improved punctuality and reliability – whether it was as Thames Trains’ performance manager, then my experience with FNW, where not only did we improve punctuality but we halved the delay minutes we were responsible for. All of the Londonlines TOCs shot up in terms of punctuality while I was there and obviously the key reason I was asked to come to Great Western was because performance was not only bad, it was shocking!
“I got asked to go over to South Western and while the coronavirus timetable has helped performance at SWR, it has not only improved, but instead of being at the bottom end of the ‘league table’ there were several periods where SWR has been towards the top. In fact we beat GWR a couple of times which caused a bit of a disturbance!”
The brief sabbatical to SWR ended in January 2021 and coincided with the announcement that Mark was to receive a CBE for his services to transport, an accolade that delighted him immensely, although he doubts whether even after many encounters with the Queen and many of the Royal Family, she would recognise him immediately.
Slough was obviously a station that saw regular visits from the Royal Train. Shortly before he started work there, a mistake in measuring the station had seen the red carpet and welcoming committee in the wrong place and Her Majesty alighting alone, much further down the platform and wandering along it looking for the exit!
In 1995 the sounding of a fire alarm in the Royal Train saw its arrival back at Slough from Southampton delayed and Mark was given the task of apologising on behalf of the railway for the delay; The Queen’s reply, as Prince Philip joined her, was along the lines of “No not at all. Actually Philip, we haven’t had a fire on the train for ages have we? It was really quite good fun!”
Royalty
Mark’s list of other royals he has assisted includes The Princess Royal and Princes
Charles, William and Harry, and his stories include one about an unusual encounter with a slightly tipsy royal nanny, who can’t be named. Senior politicians are also regulars on the GW route, with former Prime Minister David Cameron introducing him to the Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at an event at Hitachi’s North Pole Depot as “This is Mark Hopwood, he runs the trains on my local lines.”
Not only does this story have little space for the challenges the industry and GWR