Rival rail chairman to talk to Leamington audience about HS2 - but he supports the plans

Chiltern Railways chairman Adrian Shooter CBE will explain to an audience at Dormer Conference Centre in Dormer Place, Leamington on Thursday why he is backing plans for a route for 225mph trains from Birmingham to London.

HS2 would be in opposition with Chiltern but Mr Shooter believes the project would reinforce the centrality of rail for Britain’s future economic growth at a time of ever increasing rail traffic in England when the system is close to capacity.

He also believes that it will not have a negative impact on Chiltern’s current ‘evergreen’ improvements.

In a letter to Rail News in June, Mr Shooter said: “A new high-speed line enables the railway to attract more traffic from road and air — not only helping the environment, but also avoiding the need for new motorways and airport runways.

“As has been proved in many countries around the world, high speed rail will help develop the regions and overcome the north-south divide.

“Equally – if not more importantly — it will release capacity on the existing lines.

“This can then be used for improved freight and regional passengers services, and more calls by longer-distance services at en-route towns such as Milton Keynes.

“In short, high speed rail is both in the national and the local interest.”

Joining British Rail in 1970 as an engineering management trainee, Mr Shooter has spent over 40 years in the railway industry.

He led a management buyout of Chiltern in 1966 and is chairman of DB Regis UK, which owns the train operator, DB Tyne and Wear Ltd and also 50 per cent of London overground transport.

He will retire from his role with Chiltern at the end of the year.

He is also a non-executive director of Rail Safety and Standards Board and has been asked to be chairman of the CBI, West Midlands Council for 2012-2013.

A devotee of trains, Mr Shooter owns a life-size Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, complete with replica Indian station, which he runs at his home in Oxfordshire and occasionally opens to railway oriented societies.

Proceeds from the talk, which starts at 6.30pm, will go to the work of the Friends of Leamington Station.

Tickets, including a glass of wine or a soft drink, cost £5 and will be available on the door or by calling 885532.

• ANTI-HS2 campaigners demonstrated outside Parliament last Thursday as MPs debated the pros and cons of the proposed high-speed rail project.

The debate preceded the presentation of a 108,000-signature petition, which called for the project to be scrapped.

Warwick and Leamington MP Chris White was among those who presented the petition to Downing Street.

Stop HS2, the group leading the demonstration, is encouraging people to write to new Transport Secretary Justine Greening and express their opposition.

John Lee, of the Southam group against HS2, said: “One of the worst aspects of the proposal is that it totally lacks any form of integration with the existing transport infrastructure.

“It is, as Louise Ellman, chair of the Transport Select Committee stated, a ‘stand alone railway’.

“If it fails, and all the evidence points to that outcome, it’ll fail totally.”