In the spring of 1990, the chief executive’s office at British Rail received an urgent telephone call from the area manager at Newcastle upon Tyne saying there was a one-armed Scotsman wandering around the main signal box claiming to be BR’s new chairman and wanting to know how everything worked. Was it all right to tell him?
The man was Bob Reid, who had recently moved from Shell, where he was the UK chairman, and was now on the brink of a difficult five-year stint at BR that would end in a privatisation about which he had serious misgivings. His foray into the signal box, matched by an excursion into the drivers’ restroom at Waterloo, was typical of the man. Determined, impulsive and impatient to get things moving, he had a liking for human contact and an easy manner, regardless of rank.
