Gordon Pettitt, creator of Regional Railways and BR executive at the time of the Clapham rail crash

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03-04-2025

Gordon Pettitt, who has died aged 90, was one of British Rail's most visionary and effective leaders in the years leading up to privatisation, as the last general manager of BR's Southern Region and managing director of its Provincial sector, which he relaunched as Regional Railways.
Gentle-mannered but decisive, with a first-rate mind and unruly hair, Pettitt was a key lieutenant of BR's reforming chairman Sir Robert Reid in transforming the railway's component parts from quasi-military fiefdoms into hard-nosed businesses.
After three Southern Region trains collided near Clapham Junction in 1988, killing 35 people and seriously injuring 69, he offered Reid his resignation, but his chairman refused it. He trusted Pettitt – who had just given a series of dignified television interviews – to prevent a recurrence, and restore staff and passenger morale. Pettitt, notably, withstood media pressure to sack individual signalling engineers he felt were being scapegoated for a systemic failure.
Working alongside Chris Green, the buccaneering sector director of Network SouthEast (NSE), Pettitt at the Southern pushed through the electrification of several lines, improved service quality, and prepared for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Politically astute, he personally signed every letter to the 62 MPs in his patch.
In 1990 he took charge of BR's heavily loss-making Provincial sector, with more than half its route mileage and stations and 37,000 staff. He was tasked with reinventing Provincial – whose offering had already started to improve – as a self-contained business responsible for its own infrastructure.
Pettitt launched Regional Railways in April 1991, with an emphasis on 'congestion-busting' in Birmingham, Glasgow and Leeds and driving down costs. But a year later, John Major was re-elected on a manifesto commitment to privatise the railways, and with another upheaval in prospect, Pettitt left.
Gordon Charles Pettitt was born on April 12 1934, and brought up at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, by adoptive parents, Charles and Annie Pettitt. His father drove local trains for the London & North Eastern Railway. Father and son sang together in the choir of Hatfield's parish church, until Charles Pettitt suffered a fatal heart attack during an evening practice.
Gordon developed a passion for the railways, and leaving St Columba's College, St Albans, at 16 joined what was now British Railways as a junior clerk at Knebworth station. Either side of National Service with the Army in Germany – where he met his wife – he worked in operating posts in BR's King's Cross division, being selected for management training in 1960.
Pettitt became BR's Sheffield divisional commercial manager in 1974 and regional freight sales manager in 1977. Next year he was transferred to the Western Region as chief passenger manager, just as the High Speed Train fleet was introduced.
He returned to the Eastern Region in 1979, as divisional manager at Liverpool Street, a demanding role in operating and industrial relations terms. He was heavily involved in planning the redevelopment of Liverpol Street station, preparing and presenting BR's evidence to Select Committes of both Houses of Parliament.
The creation of BR's sectors alongside the regions in 1982 brought Pettitt's appointment as deputy director, London & South East and deputy general manager of the Southern Region; two years on, he was promoted to general manager.
The Clapham disaster, during the morning peak on December 12 1988, overshadowed his eight years of achievement on the Southern. The 07.18 from Basingstoke to Waterloo was approaching Clapham Junction when the driver saw the signal ahead of him change from green to red. Unable to pull up at that signal, he halted at the next and urged the signaller to set all signals at danger and contact the emergency services.
Shortly afterwards, the 06.30 from Bournemouth ran into the back of the Basingstoke train. Then a third, empty, train passing in the other direction ploughed into the wreckage. The driver of a fourth train managed to pull up.
Pupils and staff from the adjacent Emanuel School were first on the scene, being commended for their help by Margaret Thatcher. The rescue operation was hampered because the railway is in a cutting, with a metal fence at the top and a wall at the bottom.
Hurrying to the scene, Pettitt met key staff, then briefed the media. He said more work was needed to establish the exact cause of the accident, but the fault appeared to be with how BR had installed the signalling equipment, rather than the system itself.
Accepting responsibility on behalf of BR, Pettitt said: 'You can rest assured that no trains will run until we are satisfied with the safety.' He then rallied his shell-shocked management team, reminding them that they still had a railway to run.
The collision turned out to have been caused by a wiring fault. New wiring had been installed, but the old wires had been left in place and loose. The work had been done weeks before, but the previous day equipment had been moved and the loose, uninsulated wire had created a false feed to a relay.
An inquiry, chaired by Anthony Hidden QC, heard that the technician responsible was working his 13th consecutive seven-day week and his work had not been independently inspected, as it should have been. In particular, a wire count that would have shown a wire had not been removed was not carried out.
Hidden was critical of the health-and-safety culture within BR, and among his 93 recommendations were that a senior project manager be responsible for all aspects of any major, safety-critical project such as re-signalling. BR was fined £250,000 for violations of health and safety law in connection with the crash.
As Reid made way to a second Bob Reid (from Shell) as BR chairman, in May 1990 Pettitt took charge of the Provincial sector. A month later, the BR Board announced the abolition of the regions from April 1992, with each sector gaining full responsibility for the infrastructure and safe operation of its railway.
Pettitt covered 15,700 miles by rail getting to know his territory – being most concerned at BR's 'awful' offering between Birmingham and Manchester. Setting out to 'run Regional Railways like a company', he moved its headquarters from London to Birmingham, split it into five geographical profit centres – one for ScotRail – and recruited finance and planning directors from industry. Chris Gibb, later chief executive of Virgin and ScotRail, says: 'Gordon had been given a lot of railways that didn't make financial sense, and he turned them into something we could be proud of.'
Closures – of the Settle & Carlisle line and in Lincolnshire – were still on Whitehall's agenda, but despite having himself pushed through closures in the past, Pettitt held the line against more. Commissioning research that showed the worst lossmakers were rural lines recommended for closure by Beeching in 1963 but reprieved, he concentrated investment on getting commuter traffic off the roads.
When BR's workshops put up the price of new electric trains Provincial was expected to buy for Birmingham and Manchester, Pettitt found a private-sector supplier. When the Government vetoed new trains for newly-electrified lines into Leeds and Bradford, he secured redundant units from NSE to plug the gap. Regional Railways increased its income despite the economy going into recession, and opened or reopened 25 stations and three branch lines.
Regional Railways operated for just 374 days before Major was re-elected and privatisation came in prospect. By the time Pettitt put his 'congestion-busting' proposals – plus plans to electrify the trans-Pennine route – to the transport minister Roger Freeman, the government's mind was on other things.
Pettitt was prepared for the possibility of privatisation, but assumed that Regional Railways would be sold off as a whole. When it became clear this would not happen, he retired.
For the next three decades, key figures in the railway industry queued to pick his brain, on a commercial basis or informally. Asked by the Department for Transport for his opinion on the structure of privatisation, Pettitt suggested separating Glasgow commuter services from the rest of ScotRail, but was told that this was politically unacceptable.
He worked as railway adviser to the first rail regulator, John Swift QC; contributed to the development of High Speed 1 and the railway to Heathrow Terminal 5; and was involved with French-owned Connex as it bid for franchises. From 2003 to 2006, he served on Network Rail's property advisory board.
In 2004, a preserved former South West Trains electric unit was named Gordon Pettitt. He told the naming ceremony at Waterloo station: 'I was bowled over when I was told I would have a train named after me. The unit has been beautifully restored and for the general public it's a piece of history.' It was brought back to Waterloo for his 90th birthday.
Since 2014, Pettitt had been president of the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society, having been instrumental in securing the steam railway's reconnection to the main line at East Grinstead.
He was at various times president of the Institution of Railway Operators, a governor of Middlesex Polytechnic and a trustee of the Woking Homes and Railway Charities. He is the author (with Nicholas Comfort) of The Regional Railways Story (2015).
He was appointed OBE in 1991.
Gordon Pettitt married, in 1956, Ursula Hokamp. She survives him, with their three daughters.
Gordon Pettitt, born April 12 1934, died March 31 2025
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