Andy Hamilton, Managing Director of Wrexham & Shropshire
Heading up a ‘new kid on the block’ train company means being adaptable, resourceful and very hands on – as Andy Hamilton, MD of Wrexham & Shropshire, can confirm. He talked to Rhodri Clark about how the fledgling company overcame the start-up stumbling blocks to build a much-needed service.
MORE than 20 years after he joined British Rail’s engineering management scheme, Andy Hamilton’s job can still involve dashing to the supermarket at weekends to replenish buffet-car stocks. “There was one occasion when they’d run out of milk. I met the train at Banbury and gave them some,” he says.
But that isn’t because his career failed to take off. It’s because, as managing director of Britain’s newest open-access passenger operator Wrexham & Shropshire, he has to be totally hands-on.
“The MD of a larger train operating company has got a specialist engineer, an operator and a marketeer. We don’t have that luxury. The team has got to multi-task,” says Andy, 40.
He believes it was his background in rail engineering that helped the new train company avoid the pitfalls that marred the start of Grand Central’s open-access services from Sunderland. When W&S’s refurbished Mk3 coaches weren’t ready for the launch of Wrexham-London Marylebone services on 28 April, he switched instead to Mk3 coaches hired in from Cargo D.
W&S had originally promised to introduce Mk3s refurbished to its own specification, but there were delays at the design stage. Andy predicts they should now enter service by the December timetable change.
Despite the very first service to London suffering a loco failure under the media spotlight, in general the service has operated to plan over its first six months, including when weekend line closures have forced W&S to run into Paddington or via Crewe.
Driving Van Trailers were introduced this autumn. Previously the trains operated with an EWS Class 67 diesel at both ends. Using only one DVT saves fuel and releases locos needed by EWS for autumn railhead treatment trains for Network Rail.
Before launching W&S, Andy was engineering and IT director with Chiltern Railways where he was involved in bringing approximately 60 new Turbostar units into service and refurbishing Class 165 units. Chiltern’s owner, Laing Rail, now DB Regio, jointly owns W&S with Renaissance Trains.
“I take my hat off to Grand Central for achieving what they have without the support of an existing operator,” says Andy. “It must be very hard work to kick off an open-access company without the background support of an existing operator. I’ve always been able to go back to experts within the DB Regio group, primarily at Chiltern, and people who will probably have solved the same problems years ago.”
And improvements continue. The number of rail passenger journeys between W&S’s catchment area and London increased by 32 per cent in the first five months of W&S operations, compared with the same period last year. This was despite some major timetable shortcomings, which W&S will begin to correct in the December timetable change.
One issue, raised by business travellers, is the late first arrival in London at 09.54, and the long gap in return trains from 16.10 to 20.03. From December there will be an arrival before 09.00 and the 16.10 becomes 16.33 from Marylebone. However, W&S would need to lease a fifth train set to provide an early-evening departure – an option now under consideration.
Currently, there are three services each way on Sundays and W&S is considering an additional one. Andy says: “The weekend can be so different in terms of the type and numbers of people travelling. Sunday is a massive day on the railway.”
Wrexham to London services take more than four hours, partly down to the convoluted route through Birmingham and scheduled waits for other services to pass – a consequence of being the new kid on the block. However, the recast of West Coast main line timetables this December has enabled W&S to negotiate for paths as an incumbent operator.
Time savings will result, including 28 minutes off what is currently the slowest journey.
W&S and Network Rail have also been looking at opportunities for faster running on the Chiltern line. DMUs are allowed higher speeds than W&S’s loco-hauled trains, which are usually limited to 60mph and not allowed to exceed 85mph.
At Princes Risborough, for example, non-stopping DMUs pass at 65mph but W&S is restricted to 30mph. When the route was modernised in the early 1990s, it was signed for lightweight DMUs and freight but not for loco-hauled passenger trains.
“We want to be able to go through at about 60mph. Hopefully it will be a relatively simple job to re-sign it.”
Although W&S had to battle objections from Virgin Trains and Arriva Trains Wales to get a licence, Andy remains committed to the ‘open access’ ideal.
“All the other TOCs should get into open access. It’s a fantastic way to give communities a rail service. We can’t expect franchising to do everything,” he says.
“Shrewsbury is a good example. The Shrewsbury stakeholders felt they ought to have a service to London, but Pendolinos should spend their time sprinting between the big cities. It wouldn’t be sensible to haul them to Shrewsbury for a small number of people, but that doesn’t mean Shrewsbury doesn’t deserve a service to London.”
Virgin Trains aims to run its own Wrexham-London service via Chester, once a day, from December. Andy says he is happy with the proposal, provided Virgin Trains passes the same tests required of open-access operators before establishing non-franchised services.
He also argues that the Office of Rail Regulation should remove Virgin Trains’ ‘moderation of competition’ demand, at least for Wolverhampton-London journeys, which restricts W&S to pick up at Wolverhampton in the northbound direction only.
“How much benefit has Wolverhampton seen from the West Coast Route Modernisation? New trains, yes, but there are no more trains running than there were, and probably less seats. The journey time from Wolverhampton hasn’t seen the kind of benefits seen elsewhere in the WCRM, so where is the justification for the moderation of competition?”
Although his career has taken him further away from mechanical engineering, Andy still likes to get his hands oily. One of his favourite pastimes is building or rebuilding cars – most recently a Caterham 7 – from kit components. He also makes frequent trips from his home near Milton Keynes to the Norfolk Broads to sail his gaff-rigged boat, and to help take groups of youngsters on outdoor pursuits holidays.
His wife, a schoolteacher, doesn’t mind him dashing off at weekends to replenish W&S buffet cars.
“She laughs a lot about it,” Andy says. “She’s come to realise that being involved in a railway isn’t a five-day-a-week, nine to five job.”