“It isn’t an easy job but I hope I’m helping people.” Let’s hope the travelling public, which will have to wait years before they see any real improvements to the railways, see it the same way.. The challenge is very much one of logistics: the right number of men, in the right place, with the right materials and equipment. The day-to-day success of the railway actually depends on their performance.”With 18,500 new employees to manage, a £1.8bn budget cut on the cards and potential flak over the West Coast Mainline, there are probably easier ways to earn £450,000 a year than being boss of Network Rail.”You’re right,” Armitt admits. But change will come at a cost.”There will be [compensation] payments which we will make to the contractors,” Armitt says, adding: “I am not going to say exactly how much we have allowed – this is a commercial negotiation.

Given that there are seven contractors then it is going to be more than £10m.” He believes this will be money well spent, ending a culture of work avoidance among some staff: “We need to get the guys at the sharp end rather than sitting in the van – remove the excuses for not being able to work. [But] I don’t think that realistically any of them were that surprised because I have no doubt they will have sat in their boardrooms over the last year saying, ‘I wonder if …? Do you think Network Rail is likely to …?’”Network Rail believes it will save £300m a year by taking on 18,500 railway engineers from the private firms. If you get a phone call at seven o’ clock in the evening saying, ‘Look guys, there’s going to be an announcement tomorrow morning’, then yeah, I’d be dis- appointed. Last month, the company rocked the City by announcing it was to bring all maintenance work in-house. This enraged its private contractors, which were given little warning and suffered heavy falls in their share prices.”I have sympathy for them,” says Armitt, “because as an ex-contractor I can put myself in their position. A chartered civil engineer and the former chief executive of the construction company Costain, he held on to his post when Railtrack was reborn as Network Rail.

His plan at Network Rail has been to focus on engineering, unravelling the tangle of commercial ventures – such as property development – that Railtrack dabbled in. The change has permeated the organisation.Armitt says his ultimate aim is to make Network Rail “dull” Unfortunately, it is far from that. Last summer’s heatwave caused widespread problems, and Network Rail’s performance currently languishes at 79.6 per cent.”I wouldn’t put money [on meeting the target] today, that’s for sure. I think it’s going to be a real challenge,” concedes Armitt.Highly rated in the rail industry, Armitt was appointed chief executive of Railtrack while it was in administration. But already, it is likely to miss its first target of 82 per cent punctuality by the end of next March. Two years on, Armitt says it could take six years to get train punctuality back to the same level as before the Hatfield crash of October 2000.Between now and 2009 Network Rail has punctuality targets to meet if it is to trigger executive bonuses. Armitt says the first phase from Glasgow to Crewe will be completed by next September, allowing tilting trains to reach speeds of 125mph The whole route will be in operation by December 2005.