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Rail Professional interview: Mark Hopwood We’d used the 180s before, but they’re a bit schizophrenic As First Great Western moves into the last year of its current franchise, its managing director tells Katie Silvester about the work still to be done Before Mark Hopwood took the helm, the First Great western franchise had been having a rough time – overcrowding was terrible, staff were becoming demoralised and disenchanted passengers had renamed the operation worst Late western. The press was having a field day. Rail stalwart Alison Forster initially headed up the franchise, but FirstGroup moved her to another part of the company, replacing with high flyer Andrew Haines. Haines had previously run South west Trains and was by then in charge of First’s rail division, but was tasked with taking over the day-today running of FGw until its performance was back up to an acceptable level. Haines had barely got his feet under the table when he left the job suddenly for health reasons. Enter Mark Hopwood who had been running Londonlines, but was left with just the Uk’s smallest franchise, c2c, when National Express lost other franchises in the area. Hopwood was invited to rejoin FirstGroup by Andrew Haines, having previously worked for First North western – c2c, he admits, hadn’t been enough of a challenge for him. He began working alongside Haines as operations manager on FGw, then stepped up to the MD role when Haines left and quietly got on with the job of turning the company around. Slowly but surely the company’s performance began to recover and the damaging headlines stopped. So how did he set about restoring passengers’ faith in First Great western? ‘There was a very strong focus on resources in terms of having the right number of drivers, guards and rolling stock,’ says Hopwood. ‘we did a lot of driver and guard recruitment. we brought new rolling stock into the business and we put together quite a comprehensive performance recovery plan. we also looked at the timetable, the rolling stock and train crew diagrams and that led to an improvement in performance. And, if I’m honest, I think we improved it to a greater extent than people thought we could.’ As part of a £29m passenger benefit package negotiated with the DfT, which saw FirstGroup injecting extra cash into the franchise, additional class 142s were acquired, as well as an extra HST set and some class 180s were kept longer than planned. FGw’s problems had come about mainly because of unexpected growth in passenger numbers in the early years of the franchise. First had invested in extra rolling stock at the start of the franchise, but the growth in the amount of passengers commuting in and out of paddington had used up all those extra seats. Historically, British Rail had run quite small trains in and out of paddington, Hopwood explains, often just two or three cars long. ‘we looked around the Uk at what options were available and identified four opportunities across the network. The first was to bring in some extra 150s and 153s for the west services, so the services around Bristol and the west of England gained some extra services. And for paddington, there was a three-pronged approached. There were some HST buffet cars, which were off lease. we’ve had those completely stripped out and converted into standard class trailers. we’ve got those in traffic now and they look really good. Nobody would know that they were in an old buffet car. we also knew that East coast had decided not to use the five 180s that it had on lease and that they were available. ‘we’d used the 180s before, but they’re a bit schizophrenic – customers love them as they have a really pleasant environment, but they are a bit unreliable. But we’ve had experience of maintaining them, so we put the 180s onto some of the commuter services into Reading and the cotswolds line. we’ve moved the Turbos that they replaced and put them onto other lines. There were 150s, three-car sets, available so we’ve put them on the Reading to PagE 12 SEPTEMBER 2012
Curriculum vitae 1971 Born in Buxton, Derbyshire 1989 British Rail trainee 1993 BA in politics at Essex 1993 Duty ops manager for Network Southeast, based at Reading 1994 Station manager at Slough 2001 Operations director, First North Western 2006 Managing director of Londonlines 2008 Performance director First Great Western 2008 Managing director of First Great Western september 2012 Page 13
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