20 November 2025 – Introducing SWR – from the Pandemic to Public Ownership by Alex Foulds, SWR, Integration Programme Director

Alex began by introducing himself and providing an outline of his background in railways from when he started in the 1980s.  He joined the railways at the same time as Andrew Haines on the same initial training courses, and noted Andrew’s comments on retirement about the difficulties of managing change and making it happen.  They have followed very different career trajectories since then.  Post training Alex worked on the operational side starting as a station manager which proved to be an all-encompassing role where he was responsible for everything on his patch, providing a fantastic grounding in railways.  He worked for London Underground for 10 years before later moving to Southern as Commercial Director, and was also involved with Thameslink which he described as not great initially although it has improved substantially.

Then he joined First Group and was assigned to SWR in January 2020 where his first task was the building of Feltham Depot.  This was just before lockdown so he has been there right through the changes of the last few years including the effects of the pandemic on passenger journeys and the business of SWR.  Since then, he has had a series of jobs concentrating on projects rather than operations.  A brief outline of facts and figures on SWR was provided including numbers of passengers, stations, miles of track, complexities, investment and the changes in the main job of getting people into and out of London

Alex showed a map of the SWR network illustrating the size of the area covered, including suburban and mainline routes as well as long distance routes and the Island Line.  He also showed the proportions of travel in each sector of the SWR network accounting for both journeys and revenue.  Further stats and information provided detail.  Pre-Covid the annual cost of running the business was about £1 billion with a revenue of around £1.25 billion.  Now it is approximately break even between costs and revenue, which can fluctuate from month to month showing how much it has changed.

Alex highlighted the people working for SWR describing them as a very engaged workforce.  SWR is a big employer and working in the company is usually a good job although some are not well paid, but efforts are in train to improve this.  There are different aspects of the workforce from the longest serving colleague with 62 years and 9 months service, to the youngest at age 16, and the oldest 84.

Next came a chart showing changes over time, the first section from before Alex’s time at SWR, the second about changing to 10 car units and timetable changes, the 2019 industrial action and guards dispute just before Covid, and the reduced timetable during the pandemic to fit with reduced passenger numbers.  This was followed by fleet availability issues with old units scheduled to go, Arterios coming in, soil moisture problems and a ‘black squiggly line’ showing performance.  It has been a tough few years with much to be sorted out.

Covid was very important for SWR with no furlough for rail staff and a lot of changes to manage to ensure that staff remained safe.  Timetables were reduced but set to try and cater for people who still had to get to work, although most passengers stopped travelling.  New arrangements were put in place where the government took the business risks whilst the TOC concentrated on providing the service - for good practical reasons.  The transformation of the service, including introducing the Arterios, was seriously delayed with 2 production lines either stopped or seriously delayed by Covid.  Other delays were caused by the Ukraine/Russian war which prevented supply of parts made there.  The other issue was that the trains were not running properly requiring some redesign to resolve the problems.  This was compounded by old trains getting less reliable and some having to go as they were promised elsewhere.  All this compounded the difficulties, having a huge effect on the business.

The presentation moved on to post-Covid statistics including revenue and journey recovery, season ticket sales and travelling – down considerably, but with a growth in off peak and weekend travel.  Detail showed the changes in rail travel in the SWR area, how this is likely to continue over the next 2 to 3 years and where the patterns will eventually settle, all requiring planning for any necessary adjustments and taking into account all the data.  One thing that has become clear is that there are once again large numbers of commuters in the early morning peak time, whilst the evening peak is much more spread out.  As part of the changes, the pattern of cascading old stock out and getting new stock into the system, including retiring the old life-expired 455s, was detailed and explained.

This part of the presentation ended with details of the Arterios (Class 701s) and how they are coming into service with gradually improving reliability and hours in service.  Included in the contract with Alstom is an obligation to improve and update the software which is already helping.  Challenges faced have included training colleagues on Arterios which takes people out of their daily staffing roles - planned for but making providing services harder; rolling stock reliability and capacity.  SWR is working closely with NR to improve the reliability of the network including better monitoring to find and fix problems before they become major; managing soil moisture deficits that have been a particular problem in the West of England, not an easy problem to fix especially with more extreme weather.  Making sure passengers know what is going on, why, and how problems are being resolved.  Progress is on-going but still not good enough.

Some things are going well.  SWR, under new MD Lawrence Bowman, is working closely with NR to ensure improvements which has already positively affected lift availability issues at stations and made it easier for station staff to help ensure minimum disruption and maximum availability.  Growth in demand for services and revenue is slowly improving.  Other improvements include better working to ensure the railway is an integral part of the community it serves, as well as improving accessibility for all.  Resourcing pressures are on-going but improving over time, re-signalling is improving service reliability, the Island Line upgrades are complete, there will be a blockade of London Waterloo over the Christmas/New Year period to sort out a number of track reliability issues in the Queenstown Road area, and pressure is on to resolve the issue of phasing out the old Class 159 diesels with something cleaner and greener.

For the future, there will be a 5 year plan to transform our railway, completing the roll out of the Arterios, building a timetable fit for the future, transforming customer experience at SWR stations, improving information and performance especially when things go wrong, and proposals for route modernisation on the West of England line.

 

Also of note is the return of the industry into public ownership as franchises come to an end.  The most important thing is that the railways are good, well organised and run businesses.  SWR’s contract came to an end rather than some TOCs that ended because of failure.  There will be some enormous practicalities and big changes to deal with.  SWR and Wessex (area of NR) are currently going through a process of merging with a single set of objectives which should provide efficiency savings and better alignment towards a common goal.  Lawrence Bowman has experience working both for NR and TOCs and Alex is excited for the future.  There will be challenges but he is very optimistic about success.

The presentation was followed by a short question and answer session which included electrification of the West of England route – probably never, but alternative solutions are under consideration – eg the 701 ten-car units have space to install batteries.  Other questions included accessibility for all – a level of standardisation of rolling stock would be useful; fare dodgers – a sore point for both audience and TOC but some understanding of what staff have to put up with was highlighted; working with BTP on this front; issues with lift availability at stations; cameras on trains; increasing acceptance of contactless and how easy (or not) this can be.

The vote of thanks highlighted an ‘absolutely fantastic’ presentation, the long term effects of Covid on running the railways, and the unusual situation now that we are currently in the middle of renationalisation.  A brilliant and very positive evening.