Following the recent announcement that the Northern franchise has been awarded to Arriva from April this year, FoGS is delighted with today's news that Alex Hynes will continue in the role of MD when Arriva takes over. The Friends of Glossop Station send their sincere congratulations to Alex who has been a keen supporter of our work at Glossop and Dinting.
Alex began his career as a senior consultant for Halcrow Fox providing policy, financial and economic advice to transport operators in UK rail franchise bidding. From there he went to ORR before joining the Go-Ahead Group in 2005. Working in a number of roles including as Commercial Director for London Midland and MD on Rail Development, as a member of Go-Ahead’s Executive Committee he worked on the development and delivery of their 5 year rail strategy including all their franchise bidding activity.
Alex's wealth of experience was acknowledged by Northern Rail when they appointed him MD as they developed all aspects of their business, experience which will now benefit Arriva as they take on the Northern operation.
FoGS take this opportunity to wish Alex every success in his new role and look forward to continue working with him in developing new projects alongside the new operator.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM FRIENDS OF GLOSSOP STATION!
We are delighted to announce a new heritage lighting project at Glossop station. We have been striving to improve the quality of the indoor lighting at the station for some time aware that it fails to meet current luminosity tests. We have explored various options with both Northern and Network Rail as to how to replace the white globe lights. After much discussion and with photographic assistance from Glossop Historical Trust we have opted for a scheme in which the globe lights will be replaced by 16 authentic heritage lantern style lights with LED filaments. The lanterns match the style used in at the station in the past and will be made especially for Glossop station by DW Windsor of Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire who are long standing specialists in lighting of all types. We are hugely grateful to the Railway Heritage Trust and its company secretary, Malcolm Wood, for a generous donation towards the cost of these lights and to Theo McLauchlan Glossop Line Manager for Northern, in securing the remainder of the funding. Even Alex Hynes MD of Northern complimented Theo and FOGS for securing the funding at this late stage of the franchise!! We must thank too John Charles, Business Development Manager Rail and Infrastructure, of DW Windsor for his invaluable help and advice. John made several site visits in 2015 and kindly loaned us prototypes which proved invaluable in the promotion of the project. The lanterns are bespoke and it is hoped construction of them will begin this month with a view to installation by Network Rail in late February early March. We thank Peter Reid of Network Rail for his site visit, his enthusiasm and advice as to fittings and locations. We hope to show a photograph of the lantern light shortly. We thank too Mike Brown and Anthony Wright of Glossop Historical Trust for historic photographs and advice.