Gordon Dudman interviewed by Frank Paterson

Oral history interview with Gordon Dudman, conducted and recorded by Frank Paterson at the National Railway Museum, York on 29 April 2019. Duration: 2 hr. 58 min. 3 sec. Early career; Area Parcels Manager Brighton; Parcels Manager Waterloo; trade unions; Red Star Manager South West; preparation for privatisation; Purley accident; Adrian Shooter; reducing overheads; contracts; Total Quality project; Auditing processes to maintain standards; private sale not progressed; Rail Express Services changed approach; management buyout (MBO) team; sale to Lynx; Red Star Timetable; freight re-organisation rejected by government 1992; safety; making privatisation work despite reservations over structure; Wisconsin Central purchase; Royal Train; MBO irregularities; track access agreement; freight access agreements based initially on existing arrangements; Peter Kirk (civil servant); joined Privatisation Group 1996; 10 schedules in track access agreements; Access Implementation Group (AIG); Schedule 4 difficulties; Railtrack; privatisation team processes; AIG meetings; Schedule 8 performance regimes; ScotRail; business groups identified; Operational Research (OR) algorithms to determine revenue values; performance standards for delays and cancellations; Trains Running System TOPS - Total Operations Processing System (Trust) performance monitoring; calculation of value per minute; Railtrack difficulties in reaching performance targets; failure to encourage Railtrack improvements; Network Code Part 3 Network Change; Leeds re-signalling; impact on personal life; Schedule 8 Central Trains; Railtrack attitude; unintended consequences of monitoring points; John Welsby/ Brian Mawhinney discussion; Schedule 4 ongoing issues; working at Railtrack; Tom Winsor; Office of the Rail Regulator; arbitration; reflections

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.