5. How to run a railway in the era of micro-management

MD Mark Hopwood lifts the veil at Great Western.

In this episode of Green Signals we are delighted to welcome to the show Mark Hopwood CBE, the Managing Director of Great Western.

Mark is a career railwayman but is widely and properly recognised as one of the most visionary railway leaders of his generation. His ‘can do’ attitude backed by years of experience with a passion for delivering for his customers has enabled Great Western to deliver outstanding results, year after year.Mark himself accepts it’s not easy and the period we are living through is one of the toughest in recent times.

In a wide ranging interview we talk about the challenges of day to day operations and the very basics of running a railway company in 2023. We cover projects such as the electrification of the Great Western Main line, the opening of the Elizabeth line and the reopening of the line to Okehampton, pretty much the first and so far most successful of the “Reversing Beeching” projects.

Mark explains in detail why it is perfectly reasonable of the Government to want to keep a firm grip on costs – who could disagree – but we discuss whether the split of the P&L on today’s railway with the DfT in charge of costs and the Treasury receiving all the revenue really makes sense and whether it is holding us back in a return to growth. We finish with a discussion on whether it still makes sense to be running sleeper trains and Pullman dining cars in these cash constrained modern times.

Away from Great Western we talk about whether a Judicial Review of the Government’s decision to cancel HS2 north of Birmingham is a possibility.

This is a cracking episode with one of the railway industry’s best known and most experienced leaders and is one not to miss!