FROM ENTHUSIAST TO MANAGING DIRECTOR
BORN in 1971 in Buxton, Derbyshire, and then living in Whaley Bridge, to the south of Manchester, Mark recalls being taken to the nearby railway line at a very young age by his paternal grandparents.
“I think it was when I was about two, and they told me that it grew up from there, really,” he says. “I also used to visit my maternal grandparents in South Wales, travelling by train, and my grandfather wouldn’t even allow me to step foot in the house until I’d recited every station from Cardiff Central to Ystrad Rhondda in the correct order.”
Station rides
When Mark was about two-and-a-half, the family relocated to Marlow in the Thames Valley, an area he has come to know well and has spent most of his life. “Once I was old enough to be trusted to leave the house – I was probably about eight, I’d jump on my bike and pop down to the station. Marlow station wasn’t very exciting because the same train bounced in and out all day long, but soon I got talking to the train crews.”
With only a small pool of drivers and guards based at Slough working on the line, it wasn’t long before the crews began giving Mark free rides to Bourne End and back in the evening rush hour, when the shuttle service saw two trains operating. “Riding on the train led to me being asked to dispatch the train,” he says. “The guard used to go through and do the tickets and say, ‘We’re due off at 17.41, Mark, just give two on the buzzer at 17.41.’ I was about 10, 11, 12 – and that’s what I used to do.”
In those days, services from Maidenhead to Marlow required the use of a ground frame at Bourne End to change the points and the collection of a token and staff. “Very often the guards would expect me to either do it under their supervision, or one or two of them used to just send me down to do it on my own,” Mark recalls. It simply wouldn’t happen today.
