John Ellis interviewed by Frank Paterson

Oral history interview with John Ellis, conducted and recorded by Frank Paterson at the National Railway Museum, York on 26 February 2019. Duration: 3 hr. 5 min. 35 sec. Career overview; General Manager British Rail: Scottish Region; sectorisation; Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive (SPTE); General Manager British Rail: Southern Region; Chris Jago; Michael Holden; no adverse trade union reactions to sectorisation; transition; Dick Fearn; Deputy Director Network SouthEast (NSE); Deputy Director InterCity; sleeper services withdrawal; Jimmy Knapp; John Prideaux; Chris Green; Ivor Warburton; InterCity broken up; Chris Green letter from John McGregor (Secretary of State for Transport); move to Railtrack Production Director; John Edmonds not involved organisational structure; Joint Industry Combined Track Access Regime (JICTAR); Chris Stokes; performance regime; relationships; Chris Leah; Chris Jago; Martin Shrubshole; signalling strike; JICTAR; development of delay attribution principles and track access charges; track condition register absence; delay attribution disadvantageous to Railtrack; Tom Winsor; tight timescales; John Edmonds; separation of track from trains; relationship between Railtrack and train operating companies (TOCs); signalling strike; Managing Director Scotrail; politics; SPTE; Service Quality Incentive Regime (SQUIRE) regime; Malcolm Reed; management buyout team (MBO) team; workload; Paul King; National Express won franchise; savings not realized; John Edmonds management style

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.