View as PDF - Rail Professional

Interview
The Adelantes are undergoing improvements,
after a series of failures last year
Bellamy has had to relocate from Oxfordshire for
the job – she and her husband have just moved to a
village just outside Hull. But she talks about her role
with an infectious enthusiasm that sounds like it is
spreading to the rest of the Hull Trains team.
‘Looking towards next year, what I want to do is to
put a strategy in place to make the most of our frontline
staff. Customers tell me all the time how absolutely
fantastic they are, so they’re a great asset.
‘When I first came, people said to me, “Well Cath,
it’s quite a small company, isn’t it” and, actually, how
wrong they are. This job is probably one of the most
challenging railway jobs I’ve ever done. Although
we only run 14 direct services a day, we have to do
everything that a train operating company has to do,
but I’ve only got a handful of people to do it. In fact my
whole management team is 11 people and that includes
me. We do everything from setting fares to agreeing
timetables too, so there’s not a lot of places to hide!’
There is no such thing as a typical week, she says,
but on the day I interviewed her, she had already had
a shareholders’ budgetary meeting and a photocall
with a charity. Later in the day, she was due to brief
the new safety and environment officer, then to have a
meeting with the head of operations to review the day’s
performance, before ending the day with a conference
call with engineers to discuss the progress of the
modification programme for the Class 180s.
‘So there’s ops there, finance, HR, marketing and
PR,’ she laughs. ‘It’s massively hands on! And if the
trains stop running or we have any delays, I shall be in
an orange vest down on the concourse, which is how
I spent many, many days in June and July. That’s why I
feel so passionate about getting the trains fixed.’
She talks about the task ahead with obvious relish.
‘I’d like to make sure we are much better than
we are at the moment at understanding what our
customers want, and that we are adapting how we do
things to make rail travel and Hull Trains even more
competitive, much easier much more fun. I don’t want
anybody else in this region choosing any operator other
than Hull Trains for their trips to London.’
Curriculum vitae
1969 Born in Singapore
1991 BA (Hons) in business studies from Robert Gordon
Institute of Technology in Aberdeen
1991 Recruitment consultant
1992 Network Southeast management trainee for
British Rail
1999 Sales and marketing director at Chiltern Railways
2004 Managing director of Chiltern Railways
2007 Starts consultancy Interim Action, offering business
turnaround expertise
2009 Programme director of Project Eureka for East Coast
2009 Interim bid manager for Nexus Metro
2010 Independent readiness reviewer of Reading Blockade
for First Great Western
2011 Managing director of First Hull Trains
Page 22 March 2012