I think company owners and chairmen should get out from behind their desks and go and sample their own products as often as possible. I do see many bosses doing their rounds speaking to staff, but they never write the details down. They will never, ever get anything sorted. And month by month, year by year, they will suffer the consequences.
Imagine trying to do a good job in the teeth of official opposition. Imagine being told constantly to cut corners. Imagine being rewarded for good delivery by having your business taken away from you and redistributed. Imagine winning market share and then being prevented from delivering more of your product.
In short, imagine the British government’s railway regulatory system!
Communication and attention to detail can make your business run more smoothly, but saying this doesn’t nearly convey their importance. As I think you’ll see from the following account, good communications and attention to detail were what enabled us to do business
In January 1997, when we took over the first of our two railway franchises, we made a public promise to usher in new trains and lead a ‘red revolution’ for the travelling public — on the busiest train lines in Europe. It was my personal commitment to deliver on this. It has taken some time. Eventually, we were voted the UK’s best train company in January 2008 by the Institute of Customer Service. This, in my opinion, was rather overdue, but gratefully received, nonetheless! Virgin Trains also topped the ‘Passenger Focus’ National Passenger Survey with a score of 86 per cent for customer satisfaction. And
I’m the kind of person — as most people will know from my ballooning escapades — who is willing to stick my neck out and take risks. When we launched the West Coast Main Line franchise on 9 March 1997, we said we would replace the whole fleet, and improve services and connections. We also promised new diesel Voyager trains on the CrossCountry networks which criss-crossed Britain. But it would take a number of years before we could deliver this. We had inherited the worst part of the system and to start with we had to make do with a lot of 40-year-old rolling stock and clapped-out engines inherited from British Rail. Some of the rolling stock was in a terrible state. My first action as proud owner of a new railway set was to sign a ?10 million cheque so that we could get some spare parts to run the trains.
We steam-cleaned them, painted them and tarted them up as best we could. More than that, we kept them running, while promising our passengers a better service in future. It took time and a lot of pain and disruption. And we got a great deal of abuse from people who still didn’t like the idea of the railways being deregulated and privatised after half a century of nationalisation.
The 401 miles of the West Coast Main Line from London Euston to Glasgow is one of the world’s great railway journeys. As it heads north, the constant twists and turns of its gentle bends make it difficult for a train driver to build up a decent speed. Only tilting trains can counteract the terrain. It’s really a misnomer to call it the West Coast Main Line because it touches the coastline only once, briefly, at a small strand near Morecambe Bay. It is an inland route, taking in concrete-encased Birmingham with its landscape of canals, factories and occasional dereliction, busy Midlands towns such as Crewe and Wolverhampton, and Border Uplands. In the 1920s, the opulent steam trains chugged out of King’s Cross and Euston at 10 a.m. each day to race to the north. Virgin Trains was ambitious enough to try to re-create some of that lost glamour for the twenty-first century.
We felt we could transform Britain’s rail network from the worst in Europe to one of the best. But for the Virgin brand not to be too damaged in the process, we would have to bring the public along with us. Innovation had to be the difference for Virgin Rail.
For the first few months of our franchise we examined all the technological possibilities. In May 1998 I flew out to Italy from London City airport to the Fiat Ferroviaria site in Turin, which is the train-making arm of Italy’s largest private conglomerate. I saw the kind of stylish, well-constructed trains that we needed on the UK’s dilapidated system. The innovation of tilting trains was explained to me, along with the complex relationship between tilt, speed and stability. Next day the journey from Turin to Rome was my first on a tilting Pendolino ETR 460. It was fast and smooth as it hit 150mph through the Piedmont countryside. When we returned from that trip I sat down with Will Whitehorn and the rest of the Virgin Trains team. I was wildly impressed, but I kept my head. I said: ‘I want these trains to be the best there are — and the safest. I’d like us to look at what’s available across Europe and elsewhere.’
As it turned out, I was right to be impressed: the Pendolino proved to be the best electric train anywhere, bar none. Its tilting system allows a skilled driver to control the train at speed with a huge element of safety. The trains can tilt by eight degrees on rail bends — you’ll notice it, but it won’t spill your coffee. An automatic warning system rings a bell in the driver’s cab as he passes each trackside transponder. This sends a message to the driver saying it’s safe to tilt, allowing him to increase the train speed from 85mph to 110mph. On straight stretches the permissible speed is 125mph — soon to be 135mph, and we built the trains to be capable of over 140mph, ready for the future if the track is further improved. It is the driver who has the feel of the train and learns its limits — but if the driver ignores any warnings the computer automatically applies the brakes.
We signed a deal worth ?1.85 billion — at that time, my greatest ever financial gamble. The bogies of Fiat’s Pendolinos would be adapted in Birmingham by GEC-Alsthom for Britain’s narrower-gauge railway lines. (Alstom — the merged company dropped the ‘h’ — took over Fiat’s train-making in 2002.)
Stagecoach transport group chairman Brian Souter is one of the UK’s leading business figures and a ‘transport entrepreneur’ through to the bone. He and his sister, Ann Gloag, are a formidable pair: they started out in the bus and coach wars after deregulation before moving into trains. From their base in Perth — with Ann selling the tickets and cleaning the buses, and Brian driving some of the routes, they have transformed the company into one of the UK’s corporate success stories. The business was sidetracked when it tried to expand into the United States by buying Coach USA, but through their own determination and drive, Stagecoach bounced back from this setback. As I write this in 2008, Stagecoach is one of the UK’s most successful transport companies and Brian is still in the driving seat.
When it was announced I was thinking of a flotation for Virgin Trains, Brian rang me up and said: ‘I share your vision for the railway system.’ And nine days later we’d done a deal. Stagecoach held 49 per cent of Virgin Trains to couple with its South West Trains, the UK’s largest commuter network, and the Isle of Wight’s Island Line, a mini-railway company. I admired that kind of decisive action and it cemented a friendship and working relationship that has lasted over a decade. At a time when transport — and railways in particular — was never out of the headlines, we wanted to make a positive statement after years of expectation. It was all about creating a feel-good news event to assure the frazzled travelling public that something was indeed being done.
Brian shared our view that innovation — leading to a better experience — was the best way to encourage more people to go by train. And while he admitted to having reservations about the Pendolino, he said: ‘My mother used to say to me that a fool and a bairn should never see a job half done. I think when people eventually see what’s being created here they will understand we’re really doing our best to improve the railway system.’
In 2003 the Christmas panto season came early. On 4 December I arrived at one of Alstom’s vast Birmingham workshops to deliver a massive present.
I was dressed as Santa Claus and sat next to two scantily clad women on a tinsel-bedecked trap pulled by a reindeer. Brian, wearing a Glenalmond school blazer, shorts, an old-fashioned leather satchel over his shoulder and with a blue cap worn at a jaunty angle, was the lucky schoolboy unwrapping his giant train set.
Faced with a gallery of UK media, I called out to Brian asking if he had been a good boy and what did he want for Christmas. ‘Some nice, shiny, new trains which go very fast, please.’
I couldn’t resist a quip in front of the TV cameras: ‘And how about a higher share price?’ (The Stagecoach share price was in the doldrums since its mega bus deal with Coach USA. Brian and I have both been through the mill together, so I can get away with jokes like that.)
As the dry ice swirled around, amid sparkling fireworks and the booming strains of the
