Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Friday the 1st of March.

And a guest today who has the most unenviable job, I imagine. He is Martin Gilbert. He is the

managing director of first group groups open access operations and that

means he's responsible for LUMO, which runs trains between London Kings Cross and Edinburgh

and also Hull trains.

Guess where that goes from London Kings Cross?

Martin, it's a huge pressure to talk to you, but having to run these operations at a time when the railway is under tremendous stress from all sorts of points of view must be really tough.

Look, we, I feel really enjoy it. I think it's the first thing to say and actually so do our team. We're very proud and

passionate about what we do, both at Luma and Holt trains. And yes, there are challenges out

there, but actually we believe that both of our open access rail operations are bucking the

trend and are delivering. And there's actually some really exciting times for us ahead too.

Well, yes, let's just remind people what open access operation meets. The whole idea of

privatisation going back three decades. Yes, you and I were both extremely young at the time.

The whole idea was that you would get franchises coming in and running particular parts of the rail network, but you would also get open access operators.

And that effectively means the government at the moment, owns the infrastructure.

The government, in many cases, stipulates who runs trains when, where,

and that's certainly happening on the East Coast Main Line, where your area of operations is.

Of course, the incumbent is state-owned L-N-E-R.

But it has long been the view that if you get open access operations coming in, running trains

to races which weren't previously served like Hull to London, that had a very poor service,

or indeed putting in competition, not just with LNER, but also with the airlines between Edinburgh and London, that was going to do some good.

Well, and tell me how it's going.

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