Making rolling stock fit for the future
Rail has a very positive future, but it does require the industry to fundamentally adapt to different challenges, says David Jordan, Chief Operating Officer at Angel Trains.
David Jordan, COO at Angel Trains, has been an RSSB board member for five years. In this interview, he discusses the landscape of rolling stock and how investment, sustainability, and collaboration are the keys to a secure future.
David JordanChief Operating Officer, Angel Trains
I was one of the last people to be sponsored by what was British Railways, back in the early 90s. I was sponsored at university by Eurostar—it was probably the project of a lifetime, the Channel Tunnel opening.
Since then, I moved to Atkins, HSBC Rail, and finally to Angel Trains. I‘m a Chartered Engineer, but I‘ve evolved from engineering to a more commercial environment. I‘ve been Chief Operating Officer for five years, managing the day-to-day operations. I’m also a non-executive of Readypower, the largest provider of road-rail vehicles on network. So, there’s quite a lot going on, but it‘s great fun.
Rolling stock providers, such as Angel Trains, have been a success story of privatisation. It‘s achieved the core purpose that we were set up to do. That‘s to accelerate private investment into rolling stock for the benefit of the wider industry and the passengers that we all serve. In the last ten years, Angel Trains has invested £1.5 billion in new rolling stock and refurbishment. As a sector, we’ve bought around 6,000 new vehicles for the rail industry in the last few years. In terms of making the railway fit for the future, we‘ve made a massive contribution. We’ve now got ten rolling stock providers in the UK. It‘s a highly competitive market, and I think it works well. If you look elsewhere, particularly in continental Europe, they‘re tending to copy the UK model of rolling stock provision.
The future of both the broader rail industry and of rolling stock providers are inextricably linked. Sometimes, when we talk about rolling stock financing and provision, we‘re seen as being on the outskirts of the industry. We’re seen primarily as financial or city institutions, as opposed to an integral and central role in the overall industry itself. That’s one of the reasons I was motivated to join RSSB's board.
Rail has a very positive future, but it requires the industry to fundamentally adapt to different challenges in terms of passenger patterns and needs. We’ve got to find a way of attracting more farebox revenue. We’ve got to find a way of reducing whole-life costs even more—which is one of our prime reasons for existing. We‘ve also got to reduce the call that we have as an industry on the taxpayer’s purse. For me, the number one challenge would have to be that.
The industry needs to remain investable from a private sector perspective as well. We know government funds are tight. There is a role for private investment to make up the difference. Consistency of policy and approach will give investors the confidence to put large sums of money at play.
We’ve got to be acutely aware that the railway doesn’t operate in a bubble. I view Microsoft Teams, the meeting we’re having now, as probably the principal competitor to rail journeys. People now don’t always need to travel by train.
Other industries are moving quicker on things like being environmentally sustainable. If you catch a bus in London now, it’s probably battery or hybrid powered. The automotive industry is making huge strides in that sense, too. We‘ve got to rise to that challenge.
I‘ve always considered myself a railway person as well as a businessman. I was born in Doncaster and grew up in Derby—two big railway centres.
The one thing that really struck me in terms of joining RSSB was ‘a better, safer railway’. The slogan’s inspiring—but the idea that you can make a difference for the railway, for the better, was the key attraction.
I then started to look into the work that RSSB does, whether it’s about safety, standards, research, reducing costs with assurance schemes, or sustainability. These are all fundamentally important to the overall efficiency and relevance of the rail industry in the future.
We’re investing £2.2 million in taking an engine off one of our new Hitachi trains, operated by TransPennine Trains, and putting a battery in its place. In future, if we can replace all of the engines, that will become a zero-emissions train. If we do it right, we can save the industry a lot of money. That battery power on the train can bridge areas where we don’t have continuous electrification. We can avoid the expense of electrification where there are junctions, bridges, and other infrastructure issues. So, not only do you get the air quality and decarbonisation benefits, but you also get a real commercial benefit. The trial should be out on the tracks later this year.
We’ve invested in numerous other sustainability improvements and research. We’ve started to make sure that all of our trains are instrumented to monitor the infrastructure itself. It provides Network Rail with real-time data to see if there are any faults or changes in the infrastructure. In the future, we could be able to tell if the track was moving because of landslips from extreme weather.
Investors are now treating sustainability as core to their investment decision. Angel Trains were rated five stars by GRESB—that’s something that investors wear as a badge of honour.
We have now finished the refurbishment of our Pendolino fleets. It’s the biggest train refurbishment that the UK has ever completed. It’s been a collaborative exercise between us, Alstom—who physically did the refurbishment—and Avanti West Coast.
We’ve spent in the order of £117 million refurbishing that fleet. We turned out each train within two weeks. The level of collaboration that we’ve had with Alstom and Avanti West Coast has been tremendous, as has the passenger feedback.
It’s our safety record. We’re still the safest railway in Europe. RSSB plays such a fundamental role in achieving that. Industry’s risks change, they mutate, and our industry has had to be relentless to achieve the safety record that we have. I think it’s something that RSSB should be rightly proud of. It’s a fantastic achievement.
Last month we interviewed Andrea Rossi, DB Cargo UK CEO. The new RSSB board member had much to say about freight growth and the opportunities in digital transformation.
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