Former rail boss lined up to be new chair of Birmingham train company

Adrian Shooter

The former chair of Chiltern Railways is set to become the head of Birmingham’s newest specialist train company.

Adrian Shooter ran Chiltern Railways for 18 years until his retirement in 2012 and for the past 15 years he has served as a Trustee at Tyseley Locomotive Works.

Vintage Trains, which promotes main line steam excursions and operates from Tyseley Locomotive Works, revealed last month its plan to raise £3m in order to become an independent train company.

It has also applied to the railway regulator for a licence so that it can fulfil its aim.

In an effort to legitimise its case and impress the regulator, trustees have asked Mr Shooter to be the new chairman of the company.

“We are determined to ensure that (people) will be able to experience the excitement and romance of travelling on steam hauled express trains for many years to come,” said Mr Shooter.

“We already have, in Tyseley Loco Works, the best steam engine workshop in the country. As a result we have fantastic gleaming, reliable Great Western steam engines and a solid order book from third parties. We want to build on that success.

“We need to raise the quality of the rest of the operation and put it on a long term sustainable footing.”

He said that to do this, the trustees wanted to bring the train operation in-house and extend the range of its activities to make it more profitable.

One example of how it intends to do this is to tap into the demand from Train Operating Companies for driver and other operational training courses.

We have applied to the Regulator for a Licence to become a Train Operator in our own right and the Trustees have asked me to be its Chairman.

It will also have to upgrade its coach fleet to improve the quality of its offer and, to comply with new regulations coming into force.

“We are confident that we can do this but, to get started, we do need some capital. Our minimum requirement is £800,000,” said Mr Shooter.

“Many have been generous and we have over £300,000 but we still have some way to go.”

Members of the public are being offered the chance to buy community shares in the Main Line company. The move represents the first initial public offering of its kind for more than 100 years.

The new publicly-owned railway company will create up to 11 full-time roles, and support the leisure aspect of the Midlands Engine by enticing more people to visit the region.

The company also has ambitions to create an apprenticeship and training scheme to preserve and develop locomotive and carriage engineering skills.

It has selected the name Metropolitan Railway Carriage & Wagon Co, a once-famous company that built royal saloons for emperors and princesses in Argentina and China, dining and sleeping cars for the Orient Express, suburban carriages for thousands of commuters around the world, trains for Le Shuttle and the Virgin Pendolino and even the East African coach from which a man-eating lion dragged an unlucky British engineer to his untimely death.

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