Golden Whistle Winners 2017

DRS received the Golden Whistle Award for the fourth time running in London where they were officially declared “The Best Performing Rail Freight Operator”, taking home the prestigious award.

Pictured above from left: Paul McMahon – Network Rail , Chris Blunt – Network Rail, Ian Sharp – DRS, Jules Graham – Network Rail, Steve Harper – DRS. Official photograph by: Tony Miles

Organised by the Institute of Railway Operators in conjunction with Modern Railways Magazine, the annual event celebrates operational excellence in the industry.

The Golden Whistle is awarded on consistent arrival times at destination over the previous 12 months during which DRS were declared more reliable than any of our competitors. The award also recognises the hard work and dedication of the DRS workforce and the vital roles played to ensure our services get to their destination on time, as well as the strong investment in reliability of the DRS fleet of locomotives and assets.

 

Following the awards Head of Performance for DRS, Norman Egglestone said:

“This is now the fourth time in a row DRS have received this prestigious award and we remain by far ‘The Best Performing Rail Freight Operator’. DRS are rightly recognised for our excellent levels of performance and service delivery. In order to achieve this is it needs co-ordination, planning and delivery across many parts of our business.

The award is particularly satisfying due to the major difficulties we had to overcome in the period covering this award. Firstly we had the floods at Carlisle, then numerous landslips in the Highlands, Hexham, Cumbria Coast and elsewhere. This closely followed by Lamington Viaduct closure. All these events had a massive impact on many areas of the business, but as usual everyone pulled out all the stops and although we took a bit of a “dip” we still achieved superb arrival statistics. We are the only freight operator to have ever achieved over 90% of our trains arriving on time or within 15 minutes.”