James Fang has been elected President of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District board. He is replaced as Vice President by Joel Keller.
David L White has been appointed Product Line Director of Amtrak’s City of New Orleans, and Michael R Chandler has taken over the same role for the Crescent.
Guillaume Pepy has been named General Manager, Customer Services, for French National Railways. He replaces Thiérry Mignauw who has taken over as General Manager, Operating, following the retirement of Francis Taillanter. Mr Mignauw takes overall charge of two new departments, the National Infrastructure Directorate (DNI) and the Engineering Directorate.
John Curley has been appointed to the new post of Performance Director for Railtrack, with responsibility for train performance and punctuality. Chris Leah becomes Director of Operations, and Martin Reynolds is named Director, Development.
Lee Bullock has been confirmed as President of Amtrak’s Intercity business unit. Ronald Scolaro has been named Vice President of Operations. He was Chief Administrative & Operating Officer for Amtrak West.
Per Staehr has taken over as Chief Executive of Adtranz UK & Ireland. He replaces Stig Svärd who will retire after a handover period. Rainer Schmückle has been named Managing Director Sales for Adtranz Germany.
David R Goode, Chairman, President & CEO of Norfolk Southern, has been elected Chairman of the Association of American Railroads for 1998.
Netherlands Railways’ Chairman Rob den Besten has been elected Chairman of the Community of European Railways, replacing Heinz Dürr.
Petr Moos was appointed Minister of Transport in the Czech Republic on January 2.
Gerald L Nichols has been named Vice Chairman of CSX Transportation; he is succeeded as Executive Vice President, Operations, by Carl N Taylor.
Toru Fukushima has been appointed Executive Director of the newly formed JR Central Consultants Co (JCC), which becomes Central Japan Railway’s 40th subsidiary.
Fred R Grigsby has been named Vice President & Chief Information Officer for Canadian National.
American Public Transit Association Hall of Famer Mr Robert Sloan Jr, who started his career in 1932 with Third Avenue Transit System and was Vice President from 1966-75, has died.
Kathleen Regan has been appointed Vice President, Automotive, for BNSF. She was an Assistant Vice President in the Intermodal/Automotive Business Unit.
Don Gill has been appointed Senior Vice President-Transportation for Kansas City Southern.
Daniel M Mazur has joined Norfolk Southern as Assistant Vice President, Strategic Planning. William L Barringer Jr has been appointed Director of Safety and John M Samuels has been elected Vice President, Operations Planning & Budget. All three transfer from Conrail.
W Robert Bentley has been named President of the New York Cross-Harbour Railroad.
Lecia Stewart has been appointed by BC Transit as Project Director for Vancouver’s Light Rail Transit plan. She was President of West Coast Express.
Laura A Lawson has been elected Chairman of Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority She succeeds Dr Joseph E Lowery.
A restructuring of Queensland Railways has been announced by Chief Executive Vince O’Rourke. His immediate deputies will be Bob Scheuber as Deputy Chief Executive, and Steve Cantwell as Executive Director Strategic Issues. They will oversee management groups, which are increased from five to six.
The mainline business of the Freight group is to be merged into the Coal & Mineral group under new Group General Manager (GGM) David George, replacing both John Hearsh and Bill Adamson who leave the company. Regional freight will join a merged Traveltrain and Citytrain grouping, reporting to Metropolitan & Regional Services GGM Glen Dawe.
Brian Bock takes over as GGM (Business Services), while GGMs for newly-created business groups are Tony Drake (Infrastructure Services), Mike Scanlon (Network Access), and Terry Fisher (Workshops).
V K Agarwal has been named Chairman of Indian Railways following the retirement of Mr M Ravindra. Mr Agarwal graduated in civil engineering in 1961 and joined Indian Railway Service of Engineers a year later. Among his many posts he has been Divisional Manager, Lucknow, and Chief Engineer (Construction) for Northeast Frontier Railway. He also worked on secondment in Iraq. He was named General Manager, Northern Railway, in 1995 and was most recently Member (Staff) on the Indian Railways Board.
Douglas M Christy has been named President of Iowa Interstate Railroad. Mr Christy graduated in Civil Engineering from Penn State University and joined Chessie System in 1977. In 1985 he was appointed Terminal Trainmaster for the amalgamated CSX at its former B&O Chicago terminal. From 1989 he was Director, 48ft Containers, then Director, Product Management, with CSX Intermodal. He became CSX Transportation’s General Manager, Iron Highway Development, in 1995. In May last year he moved to Iowa Interstate as Chief Operating Officer.
Mike Harvey has been appointed European Workshops Director for Brambles Rail Europe in Düsseldorf. He will cover Brambles’ subsidiaries Marcroft Engineering in Britain, Ateliers de Joigny and Ets Loyez in France, EVA in Bruhl, Germany and WDW in Austria. Since 1991 he has been Managing Director of CAIB UK, where he will be replaced by John Jagger.
