Oral history interview with Richard Wightman, conducted and recorded by Peter Willey on 6 March 2018 at the interviewee's office in Milton Keynes. Duration: 1 hr. 20 min. 51 sec. Management trainee; Traffic Manager; Retail Manager; Quality Manager Great Eastern; Retail Manager West Midlands; privatisation; passenger track access contracts negotiations; initial workload high; management supervision; competition for experienced staff; Railtrack organisation; performance regimes problematic; performance regime benchmarks and disincentives; Account Executive South Eastern Trains and Eurostar; Headquarters Strategy Team; issues from West Coast Mainline Upgrade; Railtrack in Administration; industrial relations post-privatisation; separation of industry post-privatisation introduced inefficiencies; personal background

One of over 150 oral history recordings made as part of the Britain’s Railways All Change (BRAC) archive project. BRAC was set-up to cover gaps in documenting the railway privatisation process in the United Kingdom, between 1994 and 1997, when the government-owned British Rail was dismantled into over 100 privately-owned companies. The interviews capture the recollections of people involved in the planning and implementation of the privatisation process, the management of change and running the railway during privatisation.