A Lecture By MD Jan Chaudhry-Van Der Velde, Managing Director, West Midlands Trains

Tuesday 5th February 2019

Written by John Doyle

Jan Chaudhry-van der Velde began his railway career as a British Railways trainee in 1989 having graduated from the University of Birmingham with a physics degree. He is now the Managing Director of West Midlands Trains (WMT).

West Midlands trains took over the former London Midland franchise in December 2017 and are owned by a consortium of Abellio (70%) and two Japanese concerns JR East (15%) and Mitsui (15%). The franchise is scheduled to end in March 2026.

Abellio are a subsidiary of Dutch state railways NS established to bid and operate overseas commercial opportunities. In the UK Abellio also operate the Merseyrail, Greater Anglia and Scotrail franchises. Mr Chaudhry-van der Velde mused that the Scotrail franchise is often in the headlines and at 25 years long has been in operation since before the start of WMT and will be there after the end of the WMT franchise. Abellio also have bus interests operating in London and Surrey.

West Midlands Trains were contracted to operate two distinct service clusters and to meet the franchise specification are in the process of separating the two operations. West Midlands Railway in the Birmingham travel to work area and London North Western Railway in the Euston -Trent Valley -Liverpool corridor. The West Midlands Rail Executive have a strong influence, if not control, over West Midlands Railway and are creating a brand for the network as part of an integrated public transport policy. The branding is the property of the Rail Executive and is intended to continue beyond the end of the current franchise.

West Midlands trains are committed to invest £1 billion over the course of the franchise. The money will be spent on new trains, improved ticketing, station upgrades, CCTV, additional car parking etc.

The start of the franchise has not been without difficulties. In the first year services were affected by the worst winter in several years, the hottest summer, major infrastructure works at Euston and Liverpool and the ramifications of May 2018’s timetable disruption.

It had been intended to “tidy up” services to improve operation of Birmingham New St with services combined to eliminate reversals and layovers occupying valuable platform space in December 2018. These planned changes have been deferred until May of this year in the wake of last year’s timetable difficulties.

Progress has, however, been made on improving the railway; trains are being rebranded, refurbishment of class 350/1 and 350/3 units is set to start reviving Bletchley depot. Kenilworth station opened, if belatedly. Electric services have been extended to Bromsgrove, Accessibility for disabled customers has been improved at several sites and the franchise is participating in the introduction of a cycle hire scheme in the Birmingham area.

More is to come, the introduction of electric services to Rugeley, Wolverhampton station is to be rebuilt, a new pedestrian bridge has been constructed linking Telford station with the town centre and former D stock class 230 trains are to enter service on the Bedford Bletchley line in the next 12 weeks.

The rolling stock fleet is to be updated, the considerable changes planned are summarised in the two tables below.

Existing Fleet:

New  Fleet:

The talk was well received by members and Mr Chaudhry-van der Velde concluded by answering several questions from the audience.