Staying on Track: the Reflections of a Railwayman

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 2004 by Tyrrall, David E

Graham Zeitlin, Staying on Track: the Reflections of a Railwayman, Scotforth Books, Lancaster (2002), 148 pp., £14.95.

Graham Zeitlin enjoyed a forty-five-year working career as a freight railwayman from 1947, when he joined the Great Western Railway: this is his story of a career shunted between the private and public sectors. He does not intend to provide a comprehensive history of the railway during this period, nor does he relate his narrative to the extensive scholarly literature. Readers who want a more academic approach should look elsewhere. Rather, Zeitlin's book is an autobiography which despite its subtitle is as least as much reminiscence as reflection. The book is likely to prove of interest to railwaymen and women who lived through these times and perhaps to historians who want source material for their work. This reviewer falls into both camps.

Zeitlin does not allocate his fifteen chapters evenly, and one would not expect an autobiographer to do so, but rather to focus on key events. He does, but in a manner which the academic in me found rather disconcerting. He appears to spend comparatively little space on his first twenty years on the railway, or on three years in Tiger, Lep and consultancy. Rather the overwhelming emphasis is on his periods with Freightliner, when he worked for them directly and when he was bidding for Freightliner during privatisation. However, dates feature rather infrequently in his narrative, so it is not always clear which year he is referring to. This would be acceptable perhaps if the narrative were in chronological order, but Zeitlin has a tendency to chronological jumps, the most obvious being where we leap from his recruitment to the railways in 1947 to the Transport Act of 1962.

The emphasis on the Freightliner years appears to be because this is the period when the author felt that his contribution to the railways was the most significant. Indeed, the book is dedicated to his Freightliner colleagues. Even allowing for the tendency of autobiography to hagiography, his understanding of the rail freight industry is evident and he clearly made an impact on the growth of Freightliner, especially in developing a market for cross-Channel rail freight before the Channel tunnel was opened. In these chapters his descriptions of the problems and opportunities for rail freight profitability, by increasing the length of hauls, increasing staff and asset utilisation, reducing handling and marshalling, and negotiating satisfactory haulage rates, are all clear. His insights are peppered with anecdotes, ranging from those which made me laugh to some which should have been omitted.

There is clearly another aspect to Zeitlin's story and one he introduces in the first sentence of his preface, namely his antipathy to political interference in nationalised industry and his belief that railway management in the private sector is more exciting and rewarding. Freightliner was moved from British Rail (a nationalised industry) to the National Freight Corporation (a State-owned corporation) in 1968 and back in 1978. The distinction between nationalised industry and State-owned corporation may appear to be a fine one, but as Zeitlin rightly notes, British Rail as a nationalised industry was constantly faced with the dilemma of public service versus profit. The National Freight Corporation as a State-owned corporation aimed for profit, hence clarifying objectives and reducing political interference. This environment seems to have been more congenial to Zeitlin: there was more fun in those years - more pay, more perks and more parties. There was also more progress in investment and expansion for Freightliner as a company. These advantages did not cease when Freightliner was returned to the still nationalised British Rail. Indeed, the business continued to generate profits within BR until 1985-86.

In October 1988 Freightliner was merged with other BR freight operations to form Railfreight Distribution. Freightliner's and Zeitlin's freedom of manoeuvre disappeared. His distaste for management by RfD is undisguised and he left BR for the private sector. Nevertheless, his chapter entitled 'Life after the railways: private enterprise' signals his regret at leaving and his dissatisfaction with the two private rail and transport companies, Tiger Rail and Lep Group, which he joined in quick succession. To his chagrin he found that they were no better managed than the nationalised industry he had left. At this point Zeitlin could have given us more reflection on the dilemma of public-sector versus private-sector ownership and management of the railways. BR faced a number of problems when it subsumed Freightliner into RfD which are not clear from Zeitlin's narrative. The integration into RfD was imposed when recession turned Freightliner's profits to losses at the same time as new investment was needed to replace its ageing rolling stock and to develop its potential for Channel tunnel operations. BR had a number of investment concerns which posed different priorities from those facing Zeitlin at Freightliner. It is interesting to note that his subsequent private-sector employers were similarly chary of his new investment proposals. Perhaps the public versus private dichotomy was not so critical after all. For twenty years Zeitlin seems to have had a greater outlet for his entrepreneurial abilities in State-owned and nationalised industries than in the private sector.