Iain Coucher
Deputy Chief Executive, Network Rail
November 20 2006
The Young Professionals enjoyed an extremely informative talk by Network Rail’s Deputy Chief Executive, Iain Coucher on delivering the railway for 2030.
Iain stated that Network Rail’s aim is to engineer the railway as a complete transport system which is: on time, available to run trains 7 days a week, low maintenance, energy efficient, delivers the ‘whole’ journey and comes at an affordable price both to the customer and the tax payer. This aim parallels itself to Network Rail’s current drive to be a ‘World Class’ organisation not only be the best in the industry but to demonstrate World Class initiative and leadership.
Iain described how Network Rail plans to enhance the railway fit for ever growing passenger demand 
and discussed how the stations, infrastructure and trains were undergoing extensive work to meet this challenge. This has changed the way in which Network Rail maintains the infrastructure and Iain gave one example where Andrew McNaughton (NR’s Chief Engineer) was tasked to squeeze a 54 hour possession to change a series of major points into just an 8 hour window! Network Rail wants its infrastructure to be low maintenance, high reliability and to keep disruption to an absolute minimum.
Iain outlined also how trains needed to be more reliable but with lower maintenance needs with a diagram that showed a reduction in the weight of vehicles, leading to a reduced impact on the track, a reduced fatigue load and ultimately reduced maintenance. Reducing the weight of vehicles is therefore important to Network Rail’s desire to run trains seven days a week with minimal service disruption. Network Rail has hundreds of capacity enhancement projects in progress which aim to relieve bottlenecks and ‘open up’ capacity by enhancing or rebuilding (Guildford for example) its stations to meet demand and provide capacity. Iain citied the impressive example of Toyko Station in Japan, which has just six platforms, sees 15 arrivals and departures per hour, 19 hours per day and has 8 point ends. With very little or in some cases, no delay this is ultimate efficiency which maximises passenger capacity.
With Britain’s railway being the fastest growing in Europe, Network Rail has an exciting challenge on its hands. It needs to deliver the railway fit for 2030 and firmly establish itself as a World Class Industry leader.
Our sincere thanks go to Iain Coucher for giving this presentation to the Young Professionals.
Written by Laura Twitchett.
Photos courtesy Michael Pead (© 2006).
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