Philip Mengel Interview

In A friend of freight, the Guardian interviews Philip Mengel, chief executive of EWS, Britain's largest rail freight company.

Is there any romance left in rail? Brisk American ex-banker Philip Mengel didn't think so until he went for a ride in the driver's cab of one of English Welsh & Scottish Railway's goods trains in the Scottish Highlands.

Hitching a lift from Inverness to Perth, he suddenly began to notice the sun glinting on the mountains. "It turned out to be one of the most beautiful, crystal clear days in history," he recalls.

Naturally for mainstream journalists, they have to get the odd fact wrong. EWS's trains are not purple, but the maroon and gold livery of it's former US parent company, Winsconsin Central.