Interview Mark Hopwood to me the other day that the re<strong>as</strong>on we’ve been so successful at growing the rail business, particularly around the younger age group, is that when people are travelling home for the weekend or off to see some friends, they actually want to be able to sit on the train and read Facebook and Tweet; and if you’re driving a car, of course, you can’t do that. So it’s an advantage for us.’ Like other Tocs, FGW h<strong>as</strong> now entered into a new relationship with Network <strong>Rail</strong>, with the devolved regional managing directors having much more responsibility at a local level. ‘Our main relationship is with Patrick Hallgate, <strong>as</strong> the route MD on Western, and it’s clear that Patrick h<strong>as</strong> got authority to manage things and get things done that he didn’t have before,’ says Hopwood. ‘Before, even relatively small things we wanted to discuss had to be referred back up the management chain. Things have also improved in Wales where we’ve got Mark Langman. About 10 per cent of our mileage is on the Wessex route, so I’ve now got the relatively unusual situation, if I’ve got a points failure at Fratton or B<strong>as</strong>ingstoke, where I’ve got to ring Tim Shoveller at another Toc.’ South West Trains, headed up by Shoveller, is in the unusual position of having a ‘deep alliance’ with Network <strong>Rail</strong>, where the two organisations will work almost <strong>as</strong> one, with Shoveller running the operation. Hopwood is also ple<strong>as</strong>ed that infr<strong>as</strong>tructure performance h<strong>as</strong> finally improved in the Thames Valley, having been the cause of many delays for FGW over the p<strong>as</strong>t two years. But there h<strong>as</strong> been a lot of other disruption on the route, with all the work that h<strong>as</strong> been taking place at Reading and numerous other smaller schemes. Reading w<strong>as</strong> closed for six days over Christm<strong>as</strong> 2010. There h<strong>as</strong> also been double-tracking in the north Cotswolds and new platforms at Bristol Parkway. ‘Reading looks like a building site, so we are working with our customers on that. We’re just preparing now for electrification. Although we’d like our performance to be better, I think we’re doing quite well at keeping it going with all the disruption that’s going on. ‘We’ve done something with Network <strong>Rail</strong>, which the ORR have been really positive about. We’ve had people from my team embedded in the Network <strong>Rail</strong> project, working alongside them to make sure things like Reading go well. We’ve also been working with the DfT preparing for the arrival of IEP.’ Since Hopwood h<strong>as</strong> taken over, relationships with stakeholders have improved significantly, despite all the work that h<strong>as</strong> been done on the route. ‘We’ve won the overall winner award at the community rail awards two years in a row,’ he says. ‘There w<strong>as</strong> a lot of criticism of how the local services in the west were run but now our branchlines in Devon, Cornwall, Bristol and Wessex, have consistently won awards. L<strong>as</strong>t time I looked at the Atoc table of the f<strong>as</strong>test growing lines in the country, six of the 10 lines were First Great Western’s.’ The real disruption is still to come, of course, with the Great Western being electrified between 2014 and 2017. This is the re<strong>as</strong>on why First refused the optional extension on its franchise, preferring to try to renegotiate a new franchise agreement – albeit in the face of open competition – than stick with its old one, which didn’t take the electrification work into account. It will cause a lot of difficulties for the next franchisee, with line closures a necessity. Will it be worth it in the end? ‘I think it will make a big difference. If you look at rolling stock reliability across the network, some diesels are quite reliable, but generally electrics are far more reliable. And it’s a nicer environment, especially at Paddington where you’ve got the HSTs. Although the new MTU engines are a lot cleaner than the old Valenta ones, it’s still nicer to have a train shed full of electrics than diesels. And the performance characteristics of electrics, acceleration and so on, are much better. And when you add all those things together, it’s a real transformation in the customer experience. ‘When you look at other routes, they’ve benefited from high levels of investment and I hope that we’ll benefit from this investment <strong>as</strong> well on Great Western.’ Page 16 september 2012
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