Oral history interview with Prof. Stephen Glaister, conducted and recorded by Michael Lee at the interviewee's home in London on 13 February 2019. Duration: 1 hr.13 min. 5 sec. Personal background; problem of growing rail subsidy; Margaret Thatcher; protecting unremunerative services; John Swift (Designate Rail Regulator); Office of Passenger Rail Franchising (OPRAF); Roger Salmon (Franchising Director); Railtrack; Regulator’s advisory panel; government objectives; vision of competition; Initial tasks for Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR); government focus on public expenditure; sale of Railtrack; West Coast Main Line (WCML) upgrade; Passenger Upgrade 2 (PUG2); service growth; rolling stock companies (ROSCOs)

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.