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Xxxxxxxxxxx Freight
maintenance depots. At privatisation,
he worked for Anglia Railways, part of
GB Railways, where he rose to managing
director. He was then offered the chance to
head up a new freight division, GBRf, which
became part of FirstGroup 11 years ago
when First bought GB Railways.
He has always maintained that the
success of the company is down to the high
quality of its employees and he tries to meet
regularly with all his staff, most of whom
know him on a first-name basis.
Has the company culture changed since
the business changed hands
‘No. I wouldn’t let that change! I think,
like all owners, Eurotunnel are happy as
long as we stick to the business plan and the
growth continues – and they leave me alone
to set how this business should be running.’
On the domestic front, the coal market
has picked up. GBRf has a contract to carry
imported coal from the Port of Tyne to the
Yorkshire power station, Drax. In the long
term, of course, coal will be phased out as
more environmentally friendly fuels take
over. GBRf also has a toehold there, as it
transports biomass for Drax. Biomass is a
cleaner fuel source that can be made from
organic compounds, usually taking the
form of wooden pellets. It is also imported
through the Port of Tyne.
‘Drax is the biggest coal-fired power
station in Europe,’ says Smith. ‘It burns up to
nine million tonnes of coal a year, which is
a train every 45 minutes, seven days a week.
They’re keen to go to biomass – we’re moving
one million tonnes-plus a year for them now.’
A new departure for GBRf is two
contracts it has picked up to transport steel
over short distances within a plant site. Celsa
Steel, in Cardiff, produces re-usable steel
from scrap metal – GBRf has 12 of its staff
and two locomotives ferrying steel around
the site. Last autumn it won a bigger contract
to move steel around a site on Teeside, when
a steelworks that had previously closed
down was bought and re-opened by a Thai
company called SSI.
’We’ve taken 40 people on and we’ve
rented 10 locos to move molten iron from
the blast furnace to the steel works and carry
the finished product from the works to the
docks. SSI is a family run business – they’ve
got rolling steel mills in Thailand and I don’t
think they had iron ore in the old days, so
they’ve always imported finished steel. The
‘There’s talk of how
much the cost of
transiting the tunnel
is, but all I can say is
that we’re managing
to make money’
Above right: John
Smith with a Class
66 locomotive
in the old livery.
Below: A Class
66 in the new
livery at GBRf’s
Peterborough
depot
www.railimages.co.uk
march 2012 Page 29