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Interview Mark Hopwood
Basingstoke routes. The HST buffet cars lengthened
seven-coach HSTs to eight coaches. So we’ve actually
added 10 per cent more seats on the morning and
evening peak into and out of Paddington.’
Crossrail will also help to take the pressure off some
FGW services in the future, he adds.
A British Rail trainee, Hopwood confesses to
being a bit of an enthusiast and has been known to
drive steam trains in his spare time, though he’s not
a qualified driver. Hopwood joined BR for what was
meant to be a stop-gap job after his A levels and,
having failed to get the grades he was hoping for to
get into the London School of Economics, stayed
on for a year. When he subsequently got into Essex
University instead, BR didn’t want him to leave,
sponsoring him through his degree and giving him a
job at the end of it.
Despite running one of the challenging franchises
and having three children, Hopwood also makes
time to host a hospital radio request show on Sunday
mornings at Basingstoke Hospital.
FGW is now into the last year of its franchise.
The new one will begin in July 2013. First is a strong
contender for the new franchise, but the winner
won’t be announced until March.
So how easy is it to keep momentum going towards
the end of a franchise?
‘Usually, I would say it’s a challenge, but for us
there’s so much going on that we’ve got to deliver
on. Most of my team are far too busy thinking about
what they’ve got to deliver, with the new rolling
stock and the Olympics, to worry about the end of
the franchise.
‘We’ve still got to put extra rolling stock in – that
isn’t finished yet. And we’re still investing in the
business, we’ve got new driver simulators coming
and because we’ve been quite successful at bidding
for money for station improvement, we’ve got quite
a lot to do at stations. We’re putting in new car parks
and things, including a £10m multistorey carpark
at Bristol Parkway, which is quite exciting. Next
year we’ve got to move Reading depot into its new
site and gear up to open the four new platforms
at Reading and work with Crossrail there. We’re
starting to see the start of the electrification next
year as well. And we’ve got the bid that’s going in
with FirstGroup – that’s obviously quite a challenge.’
Hopwood was speaking to me towards the end of
the Olympic fortnight and was generally happy with
how FGW had been able to respond.
‘Even though we don’t serve Stratford, we’ve got
some of the big Olympic venues on the patch. We’ve
had the rowing at Eton, which has been really well
attended. We’ve had sailing at Weymouth and the
football at Cardiff. And we’ve been getting people
into London to travel to the other venues. The only
problem has been management of the station at
Cardiff, so we’ve been working with Arriva Trains
Wales on that. A lot of people have worked extra
hours to support this and we’ve had some very
positive comments from ODA.’
An FGW train was even featured in some of the
footage shown as part of the Opening Ceremony, he
adds proudly.
Wi-fi is currently being installed in some of
FGW’s trains. While some Tocs are charging for wifi,
FGW is making it available free. Hopwood sees it
as a good selling point for rail. ‘Someone was saying
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