Interview Mark Hopwood
Basingstoke routes. The HST buffet cars lengthened seven-coach HSTs to eight coaches. So we’ve actually added 10 per cent more seats on the morning and evening peak into and out of Paddington.’ Crossrail will also help to take the pressure off some FGW services in the future, he adds. A British Rail trainee, Hopwood confesses to being a bit of an enthusiast and has been known to drive steam trains in his spare time, though he’s not a qualified driver. Hopwood joined BR for what was meant to be a stop-gap job after his A levels and, having failed to get the grades he was hoping for to get into the London School of Economics, stayed on for a year. When he subsequently got into Essex University instead, BR didn’t want him to leave, sponsoring him through his degree and giving him a job at the end of it.
Despite running one of the challenging franchises and having three children, Hopwood also makes time to host a hospital radio request show on Sunday mornings at Basingstoke Hospital.
FGW is now into the last year of its franchise. The new one will begin in July 2013. First is a strong contender for the new franchise, but the winner won’t be announced until March.
So how easy is it to keep momentum going towards the end of a franchise? ‘Usually, I would say it’s a challenge, but for us there’s so much going on that we’ve got to deliver on. Most of my team are far too busy thinking about what they’ve got to deliver, with the new rolling stock and the Olympics, to worry about the end of the franchise. ‘We’ve still got to put extra rolling stock in – that
isn’t finished yet. And we’re still investing in the business, we’ve got new driver simulators coming and because we’ve been quite successful at bidding for money for station improvement, we’ve got quite a lot to do at stations. We’re putting in new car parks and things, including a £10m multistorey carpark at Bristol Parkway, which is quite exciting. Next year we’ve got to move Reading depot into its new site and gear up to open the four new platforms at Reading and work with Crossrail there. We’re starting to see the start of the electrification next year as well. And we’ve got the bid that’s going in with FirstGroup – that’s obviously quite a challenge.’ Hopwood was speaking to me towards the end of the Olympic fortnight and was generally happy with how FGW had been able to respond.
‘Even though we don’t serve Stratford, we’ve got some of the big Olympic venues on the patch. We’ve had the rowing at Eton, which has been really well attended. We’ve had sailing at Weymouth and the football at Cardiff. And we’ve been getting people into London to travel to the other venues. The only problem has been management of the station at Cardiff, so we’ve been working with Arriva Trains Wales on that. A lot of people have worked extra hours to support this and we’ve had some very positive comments from ODA.’
An FGW train was even featured in some of the footage shown as part of the Opening Ceremony, he adds proudly. Wi-fi is currently being installed in some of FGW’s trains. While some Tocs are charging for wi- fi, FGW is making it available free. Hopwood sees it as a good selling point for rail. ‘Someone was saying
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