Even better, as managing director of Alliance Rail
Holdings, he had bought the rights to the name GNER (Great North Eastern Railway) as well as GNWR (Great North Western Railway). To add to the historic theme, the new GNER and GNWR logos use a version of the lion logo, which British Rail used in its early days. In a similar way to Grand Central, Alliance has
identified cities that are poorly served by rail – including Bradford, Rochdale and Huddersfield – and is offering to give them direct trains to London. As with all open access services, there will be restrictions on which stations trains can stop at, to avoid too closely duplicating the services of franchised operators. To begin with, the whole concept looked like something
of a publicity stunt – how would Yeowart find the millions necessary to fund something like this? But Alliance now has a major backer. When I met him at his York-based offices, Yeowart was reluctant to name the company that is funding Alliance, which, he explained, was happy to remain in the background for now. But a look at the Companies House website reveals all. The mystery backer is Arriva, which, of course, has just been bought out by Deutsche Bahn. Funding shouldn’t be a problem, then. Alliance’s plans are broadly this: to avoid the sort of
conflict that Grand Central had with GNER, services would not start until 2014 at the earliest, by which time both the new East Coast and West Coast franchises will have been awarded. Both franchise holders, therefore, would be aware of Alliance’s plans before submitting their franchise bids. Rolling stock will be designed specially to run on both electric and diesel traction, with the plan being to source them from China.
‘Rolling stock will be designed to run on both electric and diesel traction, with the plan being to source them from China’
In the meantime, Yeowart’s complicated history with
Grand Central is not quite over yet. Grand Central’s management tried to derail his new venture last year when Yeowart announced details of the routes he hopes to run. His former company put out a press release saying that it was ‘considering its legal position’ with regard to intellectual property, because Yeowart had been working on some of those routes when he was at Grand Central. ‘There was only one of the routes on their list that there
was potential conflict over and that was Cleethorpes,’ says Yeowart. ‘So I suggested we meet to discuss it, but I never heard any more. I’ve deliberately tried to avoid competing with them.’ The press release also made it clear that Yeowart had
been sacked. An industrial tribunal is taking place at the time of writing, as Yeowart wants to clear his name. Ironically, he had been on the other side of industrial tribunals as a British Rail manager when staff had been sacked. ‘They’re never pleasant,’ he says. If the plans do get the go-ahead, Yeowart’s ideas on
rolling stock are going to be the next big challenge. His hopes for developing rolling stock that could run on both diesel and electricity are no small undertaking. The government tried to do a similar thing, of course, with the Intercity Express Programme (IEP) and was due to hand a contract to Hitachi, but all that is on hold now. In his review of the IEP, Sir Andrew Foster pointed
out that no other country uses bi-mode trains on express routes. They are used in several countries, including France and the USA, but only on regional routes. Foster also believed that the proposed Hitachi model, which would have replaced the HST, would have increased journey times. ‘A lot of Chinese train technology is the same as
Europe’s. And their technology now is light years ahead of where it was. The output capacity of their factories is phenomenal,’ says Yeowart. Have the well-publicised problems with IEP not put
him off? ‘From what I understand, because I wasn’t really
The proposed route for the GNER brand. Stations identified as ‘parkways’ are those at which Alliance wants to build extended car parks
PAGE 20 OCTOBER 2010
involved in IEP, the specification kept changing. Now our specification is pretty straightforward: we want any train built to work in the UK and to be built with UK rail engineers involved. That will be Network Rail because it’s a brand new build. ‘It’s got to be able to operate under the wires or without
London King’s Cross
the wires. If we’re going to service places off the main line, then you either go back to a Seventies railway by sticking a diesel on the front of it when it arrives somewhere, or
Halifax
Hebden Bridge Rochdale
Manchester Victoria Eccles Parkway
Dewsbury Huddersfield
Guide Bridge Parkway Stockport
Alderley Edge
Skipton Keighley Shipley
Guiseley Ilkley
Huddersfield Penistone Barnsley
Leeds
Micklefield Parkway
Meadowhall Sheffield
Worksop Reford Doncaster
Thorne South Parkway Scunthorpe
Habrough Grimsby Town Cleethorpes
Maryport Wigton Workington Whitehaven Sellafield Barrow-in-Furness Ulverston Carnforth Lancaster Blackpool North
Kirkham & Wesham Preston
Newton-le-Willows-Parkway Winsford Parkway
Bradford Interchange Leeds
Crewe Carlisle
Tamworth Nuneaton
Kings Langley Parkway
London Euston
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