DINNER AT THE ROUNDHOUSE
Dinner at the Roundhouse
RTM reports from Dinner at the Roundhouse 2012, with keynote speeches from Anna Walker, chair of the ORR, who spoke of the need for the railways to ‘move forward positively’ after the West Coast franchising debacle, and Prof Richard Parry-Jones, chairman of Network Rail.
T
he annual black tie dinner at the famous Derby Roundhouse went off with a bang,
as industry professionals came together to share their successes and forge new connections.
Held by Mainspring and headline sponsors Garrandale, the event was attended by hundreds of operators, manufacturers and suppliers from around the industry.
Keynote addresses were given by the Hon Anna Walker, chair of the ORR, and Professor Richard Parry-Jones, chairman of Network Rail, and guests included shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle and Andrew Wolstenholme, chief executive of Crossrail.
A four-course meal was followed by a set from comedian Ardal O’Hanlon, best known for his role as Father Dougal McGuire on the sitcom Father Ted, and networking into the early hours.
Dinner at the Roundhouse also supports the charity Railway Children, which provides support for street children around the world. On the night of the dinner, guests raised over £3,200 for the charity through a prize draw.
A positive future Walker
it seems to me that this episode has actually affected the public view of the railways – that’s clear from the feedback that I get. And to the extent that that’s true, we all have a role in trying to ensure we move forward positively. It seems to me that the events of last week are particularly sad, given how much the railways have to be proud of.”
Walker went on to highlight the growth curve improvements that we want in this country.”
She highlighted the importance of HS2’s linking effects across the country and concluded that there was “an enormous amount for us to be proud of and carry forward”.
Despite this, the industry is “strangely unconfi dent”, Walker suggested, as well as the most complicated she had ever worked in.
“We are a regulator that passionately believes that we should do less.”
in rail, which she said “most sectors would die for – particularly in the current economic climate”, as well as continued government investment, as reasons to boost the industry’s confi dence.
As a regulator, she maintained that the industry could not afford to rest on its laurels, but celebrated how far safety, passenger satisfaction, reliability and performance had all come.
Sector-wide improvement started her keynote address by
acknowledging the recent negative media surrounding the railways, following the cancellation of the West Coast contract award to FirstGroup, but said: “I don’t want to dwell on the ins and outs of that.”
She said the two reviews into the incident and its impact on the wider franchising programme would get to the bottom of the errors.
“Whatever emerges as a result from all of this,
Walker said: “It isn’t just those who run the infrastructure and those who run the trains over them, but those who supply the cars, who think about the design of the next trains; it is a sector- wide effort that has achieved all that.
“That our railways can help our economic growth has been a key part of it. They can link cities and local communities and have a really key role to play in the environmental
“[It is] a complex sector with a lot of regulators, providing incentives and crucially those incentives not aligning – not encouraging people to really work in partnership with each other. I think it’s grasping that partnership for change, whereby we can all make a real difference to our 21st century railways.”
She concluded that the future has “the ingredients, if we can all grasp it, for it to be really good”.
16 | rail technology magazine Oct/Nov 12
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