A Life on the Railways by Tim Shoveller, Regional Managing Director, Northwest and Central Region of Network Rail
Tim Shoveller is still quite a young man but, in his working life as a railwayman, he has not only got to the top but packed in an incredible amount of experience, as he told the group in his compelling talk on January 19th.
He is a local boy from Frimley and explained that (like most of us!) he has had a big interest in railways from a young age. After train spotting at Reading, his growing passion led him to our local heritage line, The Mid Hants Railway (Watercress Line) where he became a volunteer. Where better to learn the basics of railway operation, where everything is done the traditional way, in a disciplined manner and to the highest possible standards? (He won’t be the only professional railwayman to have started as a heritage railway volunteer!)
Tim won a place at university but within three days he realised that his passion for running trains was too powerful to allow him to settle into the academic life of a student. He left! Within a short time he had arrived at Guildford station where his enthusiasm and dedication saw him quickly promoted to station supervisor. That’s where the fun and games started. Tim confesses he hated night turns at Guildford; he was hit, spat on, kicked, and recalls feeling unsafe at night; he remembers a group of squaddies from the pub, crashing through the station and drunkenly leaping across the tracks to reach their train across the platforms.
Then he joined Eurostar, which in the nineties seemed the future in rail travel. Almost awed by the sight of the modern sleek twenty coach long Eurostar trains, Tim soon found himself duty manager at Waterloo station. Things rarely run smoothly for long, and the weather took a hand; snow blocked the Channel tunnel and Tim suddenly found himself with 20,000 stranded passengers for France. Lateral thinking rustled up eight car Class 455 EMUs and chartered Boeing 747s on the Gatwick airport runways.
From Eurostar to Silverlink Railways (remember them?) and Willesden Junction (tussles with drug barons) then on to Wessex trains to be their first director for three years. Subsequent time on West Coast honed Tim’s management skills, and within a short time. he was called back by South West Trains to manage that company’s new proposed partnership with Network Rail. As Managing Director Tim did his best to get people from the two organisations working together, but says that the two companies were “going in different directions” and three years at this post left Tim severely strained. Tim admits that he found the challenges a great experience, but also very frustrating.
His current position is that of Managing Director of North West and Central region of Network Rail. Where is this? There are three “routes” which together make up 24% of the national rail infrastructure. The routes are based, respectively, on the main lines from Marylebone on Chiltern Rail, Euston on West Coast Main Line and the area of the northwest based on Crewe - including WCML to Carlisle and lines to Liverpool and Manchester. These three segments of rail claim to run 40% of today’s railfreight.
The challenge to managing this sprawling layout is made worse by the lamentable results of the Coronavirus pandemic on the system, in particular due to the reduction of passenger and freight traffic over the past three years. Tim spelt out the now familiar litany of reduced passenger numbers and receipts, especially in commuter traffic. The establishment of the work from home mindset amongst commuters may be permanent, but may also be a blessing in disguise when recalling the dreadful overcrowding of peak hour services before the pandemic. Now underused rolling stock may “go off lease” and formerly disgruntled commuters encouraged to use rail for leisure purposes instead. From the management perspective it is essential to get costs down, for the railway community to dig deep and work together efficiently with safety interests always paramount, despite the disruption and rancour of the current strikes.
The many challenges facing Tim and his colleagues include: dealing with landslips, eg as at Whitmore, Crewe; severely cracked and broken rails as discovered at Bourne End; dangerous lineside trees and slipping embankments, caused by warming climate conditions. On Tim’s “patch” are such projects as the Bedford to Bletchley line rebuilding due to reopen this year, the reconstruction works at Euston Station including new public destination and information boards with the additional effect of increasing the amount of concourse pedestrian circling space, and of course the ongoing saga of HS2 to Birmingham and, one hopes, beyond. The matter of how to alleviate the bottleneck between Manchester Piccadilly and Oxford Road stations, and the chronic delays presently caused continues.
That is a big enough in-tray to keep anyone busy, and one just hopes that Tim’s effervescent enthusiasm for his work is not run into the ground by the constant stress, not to mention the biggest uncertainty of all, the whole question of the future of our railway system. As Tim says, “the railway is not in a great place (at the moment) but some quality things are happening”.