FIRST Great Western, a franchise in crisis 18 months ago, is staging a remarkable turnaround in performance of the 1,500 train services it runs every day.

But, in his first major interview since being appointed managing director of the troubled franchise in December 2008, Mark Hopwood was still exercising caution.

“I don’t want people to think that we are sitting here smugly saying everything is fixed.  We are not complacent,” he says.

“But over the past 10 months we have made significant improvements in performance. This allows us to talk with more confidence to our stakeholders, MPs, customers and staff.”

Latest figures up to 6 Dec-ember show that FGW has risen to 7th against other train operators in the Public Performance Measure league, with a score of 87.7 per cent of all trains arriving on time – a big increase compared with the start of 2008 when the figure was less than 80 per cent.

“As far as we can see, we have shown the fastest improvement in PPM that there has ever been,” says Mr Hopwood, 37, who started his career on the Western some 20 years ago.

Moving Annual Average (MAA) figures are also encouraging. Twelve months ago the figure was 82.2 per cent of trains arriving right time, with the latest figure 88.3 per cent.

The recent statistics are in sharp contrast to the dire performance being suffered by the train company soon after it was awarded the franchise in 2006, merging three companies into one.

At one stage, FGW, which covers a huge part of the rail network with routes to the West Country, South Wales, the South Coast and the Cotswold line, was beset by problems. MPs were besieged by passenger complaints and there was a fares strike because of mounting punctuality and overcrowding problems. Rolling stock failures, staff shortages and poor response times to incidents by Network Rail led to the mounting headaches faced by FGW managers.

Last year the company and the Department for Transport agreed a £29 million budget to get things back on track and a number of investment programmes are under way.

Mr Hopwood, former managing director of London Lines, joined First Great Western as performance director just 12 months ago as part of a new team put together by Andrew Haines, who resigned as chief operating officer of First- Group in December.

As director of First’s rail group, Mr Haines had also taken on the mantle of First Great Western MD after a major reshuffle of senior people, and launched a number of initiatives aimed at getting the franchise back on track.

Now a very different picture is emerging: Complaints have slowed to ‘a trickle’, says Mr Hopwood.

A railway manager known for ‘mucking in’ on the front- line when necessary, he is quick to praise staff: “Our staff are fantastic and Dave Ward, the Network Rail route manager, has spent a lot of time rebuilding relationships.

“Dave has also done a fantastic job together with Chris Rayner, the territory maintenance director. Two of the key issues we were facing were unreliability of the assets and poor response when things went wrong.

“Sometimes there would be an asset failure in the middle of the day and this was not fixed by the evening peak – then the whole railway fell over. But recently we had a
broken rail in Sonning Cutting. We allowed NR to close the down main track and diverted trains, and in one-and-a-half hours the line was returned to traffic.

“A lot of it is about good leadership. Staff need clear direction in the way they need to go.”

Some of the most significant initiatives have included the recruitment of more than 100 drivers and 146 conductors to meet timetable demands.

Rolling stock resources have also been strengthened.

Twelve Class 142 Pacers were brought into Exeter to ‘fill a need’ while five Class 150s came in from Arriva Trains Wales and three Class 180 Adelantes were retained to improve resilience of services and reliability.

In addition, two-car Class 158s used on the Cardiff-Portsmouth services have been extended to three-car trains to solve overcrowding complaints. Reliability is also up, with Class 158s seeing miles per casualty – breakdowns or issues which stop a train – improving from 3,410 to 9,443.

Single-car Class 153s used on the West Country branches are being ‘refreshed’ internally and given engineering im-provements along with Class 150s, and the Thames Valley fleets of Class 165s and 166s are also getting an upgrade.

The £150 million refurbishment of the HST fleet – the biggest of all HST fleets
working on any franchise – is now complete. And the building of a servicing shed at Bristol St Phillips Marsh depot has provided FGW with much needed facilities, making trains based there more reliable.

“Having a fit-for-purpose DMU shed means staff have not got to stand outside in freezing temperatures refuelling and re-watering,” says the MD.

The timetable has been ‘tweaked’ to give better operational resilience and make it more robust, while some local trains such as Slough to Windsor now run every 20 minutes – a 50 per cent increase. And sleeper trains to Penzance have had a £2million investment and are seeing services going up.

The input of staff has also been vital in getting the franchise back on track. FGW and Network Rail employees work side by side at one of the earliest integrated control centres in Swindon. “Our people are working with NR people more positively now. We have seen significant improvements in incident management.”

Ensuring passengers receive good information when things go wrong is also a priority with train managers and conductors who have learned lessons from disruption. Also to that end, gateline staff and their managers at Paddington will be the first to go through a £4 million customer service training programme. A ticket office, standard class area and buffet area of an HST have been replicated for the training.

“This will not be a case of just learning by rote, it will be proper role play about putting the customer first,” says Mr Hopwood.

Changes in infrastructure are also set to help performance on FGW.  Speeds on the slow lines between Reading and Paddington have been increased from 75 to 90mph to give Class 165/166s better ‘catch up time’ during disruption. But one of the most significant  projects will be to double-track much of the Cotswold line which suffers delays and lack of flexibility because of its single-line status.

“We are working very closely with NR on this. They are asking us for our opinions and involving us a lot – it’s a real partnership.”

There are plans, too, for a £40 million investment in station improvements.

The MD is also looking forward to getting some of the 200 new carriages, of which building has been accelerated by transport secretary Geoff Hoon.

“We are working with the DfT to get these vehicles ordered. Hopefully, we will have them in three years’ time.”