In issue 234 of Railways Illustrated, we spoke to newly-appointed Peak Rail general manager Mark Sealey about his plans for reviving the fortunes of the Derbyshire heritage line. In the first of a new occasional series of articles looking at heritage railway management, Andy Coward met up with Mark to find out how those plans are progressing.
“If I’d known then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have taken the job,” says Mark Sealey, the general manager of Peak Rail, as we sit down on the eve of his second anniversary in the top job at the Derbyshire heritage railway.
Taking over the role in March 2022, it’s fair to say that Mark’s first few months in charge of the four-mile line was very much a baptism of fire. A highly experienced railway engineer and manager who previously led the Chasewater Railway through a period of change and also worked for Railway Support Services, Mark was seen as the ideal candidate to lead Peak Rail as it emerged from the post-pandemic era, which left so many of our heritage lines in a bruised and battered condition.
He was appointed to take over the day-to-day management of the railway, replacing Peak Rail’s long-standing former managing director, Jackie Statham, who died in the period between Mark’s appointment and when he actually started work. This sad and unexpected development forced him to hit the ground running almost from day one, with very little in the form of a handover.
Brimming with ideas, his plans focused on breathing a new energy into the railway, while looking carefully towards growth of the business, which sits in one of Derbyshire’s honeypot tourist areas that should be rich pickings for a heritage railway.
However, it quickly became apparent that Peak Rail was not in the best of health financially and that a lot of the railway’s staff and volunteers had become demotivated, with many having already left the line by this stage. Mark realised that some fairly radical changes would need to be made – and quickly – if the railway was to survive.
