Colin Walton, Chairman and chief country representative for Bombardier Transportation in the UK and Ireland.
ONE of the best bits of advice Colin Walton ever had was from his father, a former coal miner who swapped the pit for life as a railway ganger.
Being brought up in the Yorkshire mining town of Garforth, near Leeds, the young Colin had expected to follow the path of many of his schoolmates and go down the pit. But his father had other ideas.
“My father said, ‘if you decide to go down the mine, you are out of this house’. It was one of the best bits of advice I ever had,” said Colin.
He left his secondary school without qualifications and joined British Rail’s apprentice training school in York in 1966. “My mates down the pits were earning three times as much as me. But in five years, after I finished my apprenticeship, I had overtaken them.”
Now, as Bombardier Transportation’s top man in the UK and Ireland, those early days on the railway are a lifetime away. But Colin has never forgotten his roots or his days as an apprentice.
In fact, those early days underpin his strong belief in the need to encourage apprenticeship schemes on the railway.
As an employer, his company now has some 40 apprentices. And as new chairman of the East Midlands section of The Prince’s Trust charity, he is determined to see more young people take up railway careers.
He says: “I am passionate about getting more apprentices into the rail industry. I believe there is a welter of untapped young talent out there who might not have got the best start in life. We need to put that talent to the best possible use.
“I left school at 15, but I didn’t have the same sort of pressures on me that some young people have on them nowadays. My family were hugely supportive, there were no drug problems – if you had a couple of Double Diamonds that was it.
“Now we have a situation where some kids leave school with no hope at all. We have to change that.
“I could not fault British Rail for training and one of the best things it gave me was when I was allocated a mentor. He took me under his wing at 15 and was nurturing and encouraging. I still sometimes ring him up nowadays if I have an issue to sort out, although he is long retired.”
During his apprenticeship, Colin, now 57, did the rounds at a number of local train maintenance depots, from Holbeck, Knottingley and Leeds to Doncaster and York main works.
During that time he took and passed his City and Guilds examinations in electrical/electronics, later gaining a Higher National Certificate.
“You never forget your apprenticeship days, filing away at a bit of metal until you got it right. It might have been boring but you learned to get things right.”
He applauds the Network Rail apprenticeship scheme in which 200 apprentices are trained by Royal Navy instructors at Portsmouth.
“It’s a terrific scheme. I would like to see our apprentices work in Network Rail for a time and vice-versa.”
In Derby, where the Bombardier Litchurch Lane site is one of the city’s biggest employers, there is a close partnership with Rolls Royce, another major employer, with Bombardier sending its first year apprentices to the RR training school.
“I feel we are working together to help the total economy of the area,” Colin says.
He and his team firmly believe that giving young people the engineering skills needed to take the industry forward is essential, especially for a company which is now short-listed to bid for one of the biggest train orders for years for the Thameslink expansion.
The company has been taking on people for short-term work – it currently has a full order book building trains for London Overground, Southern, London Underground Victoria and sub-surface lines – but the UK boss wants to see those jobs made permanent if it lands the multi-million pound Thameslink order.
Behind the scenes Colin Walton has been ensuring ministers are aware of the perils of ‘peaks and troughs’ in the train manufacturing industry, where a steady flow of work is ideal. “We want an order that will breach the trough,” he says. “I think this is now well understood by government.”
The Bombardier boss unashamedly makes a case for building the new Thameslink fleet in Derby: “We can deliver, and at a good price,” he says. “And the Thameslink trains would fit on the EMU lines with the best bogies in the world – the B5000, which are fitted to our Class 172 Turbostars.”
Bombardier also hopes to take ad-vantage of the government plan to accelerate the building of 200 new carriages at a cost of £300 million.
On one thing Colin Walton is very clear – the need to keep to tried and tested parts and equipment for trains. “Too many times we go radical in this industry and try and re-invent the wheel. We need to develop a product that we can fine-tune going forward, but in which the basic concepts are the same and the risk factors lower.
“Our maintenance people sit down with our design team when we are designing a new train or product – it may take 18 months to build, but it’s got to be maintained for 30 years.
“We want to be fitting proven parts on a train rather than unproven ones or the latest gizmos. The railway environment is very onerous.”
After his apprenticeship Colin worked on estimates for the installation of electrical systems at locations in the Leeds division of BR.
Married when he was 21, he moved to Derby to work on HST design as a project engineer but later realised he was ‘not cut out’ to be an engineer and moved into management.
He studied for a diploma in management studies and later took a Masters degree in the subject.
There followed a number of senior appointments with companies involved with rolling stock and he joined Bombardier in 1991 – “one of the best moves I ever made,” he says.
He worked with Bombardier Prorail in Wakefield as business development manager and in the mid-’90s became involved in the ‘key milestone’ development of the Virgin Voyager trains.
Later he became vice-president, sales and marketing, for the Atlantic division of Bombardier.
In 2005 he was appointed to the top UK job, chief country representative, UK & Ireland, responsible for all aspects of the company’s work in the UK and controlling a workforce of 5,000 in locations from Derby and Crewe to Ashford, Eastleigh, Ilford, Reading and Plymouth.
The company provides services in main line, metro and services divisions, covering heavy and light rail train design and building plus major repairs, overhaul, and signalling design. There is also a bogie division.
The worldwide company is based in Canada and is very much a family affair – one family controls 51 per cent of the shares. “But,” says Colin,“it’s a global business and we are in a very competitive market.”
Colin’s life, however, is not all trains. Rugby League is a passion, as is travel. He is also chairman of the Derby and Derbyshire Rail Forum and represents Bombardier at the Railway Industry Association.
Colin admits to being in many ways a ‘jack of all trades’.
“I know enough about everything to be dangerous,” he jokes.
Reader Comments:
Views expressed in submitted comments are that of the author, and not necessarily shared by Railnews.
Idea - deliver a system to test IEP Bimode with Bi-star non-driving trailers and extend Turbostar(& Electrostar) units at same time.
Current programme seems to be just 1 Cummins unit to develop IEP diesel module, this would deliver several units in real service situation, which can fail and isolated be driven on remaining Turbostar units. Work with Hitachi to deliver proven system - retro conversion of Electrostar/Turbostar fleets to bi-mode, go anywhere trains.
Would unlock turbostar units (TPE 2 cars become 3 cars & a 2+2 diagram can be 2 x 3 car diagrams, XC standardise as all 3-car sets, Southern could dieselise 3-car 377's to operate Ore-Ashford or Oxted-Uckfield, and couple these to EMU's to provide longer trains Hastings-Brighton/Oxted-London)
Dave Holladay, Glasgow