It must have been 2005 or so when I first met Adrian. I was a student of Mechanical Engineering and he had been invited to become the President of the Imperial College Railway Society (ICRS). The ICRS had been dormant since 1983 but had recently been brought back to life by myself and two members of staff at the university; Kim Winter and John Barnes.

John was a daily user of the Chiltern line from Haddenham & Thame Parkway, and it was his idea to invite Adrian to be our first President. We thought that Adrian would be far too important to accept our invitation but to our astonishment and delight, he did.

There began several wonderful years of knowing Adrian. To me as a humble youth he always seemed like one of those Captains of Industry that you read about in books and on at least two occasions he spoke to us at our annual dinner in South Kensington, enrapturing the audience for several hours. At one of those dinners I picked him up from Marylebone and chauffeured him across London in the veteran 1902 car nicknamed ‘Bo’ which is the motorised mascot of the City & Guilds College Union. Flying through the streets of London’s ‘Zone 1’ in a 103-year old crock, with sketchy brakes, driven by students in the darkness of a cold November night, must have been an experience which stuck with him because he recounted it several times when I later went to work for him at Vivarail. He would often introduce me to others with, “This is Dave and he once nearly killed me”. But in hindsight this is exactly the sort of thing that Adrian thrilled in.

Following the London joy ride and having not done him any lasting damage, I wrote to Adrian asking for a 3-month summer placement at Chiltern Railways and I soon became another one of hundreds of young engineers given their first taste of the real world by Adrian. Suffice to say it was a fantastic experience working with the Engineering team at Aylesbury depot.

I didn’t go immediately to work for Chiltern upon graduation, instead going off to work at Bombardier (formerly Adtranz) in Derby. Adrian could be quite rude about Adtranz / Bombardier, and would later joke that I should have come and worked directly for him when I left university, to which I would reply, “well you never asked!” but in recent months he conceded that those 9 years at Bombardier were probably not a bad grounding for later endeavours at Vivarail.

And so it was that in summer 2018 I happened to be looking for a new job and some e-mail to do with Vintage Trains popped into my inbox one evening. This prompted me to drop a little note to Adrian just to say hello, in passing I mentioned that I had left my previous post. I got a typically short reply straight back saying, “Can I call you”, this was about 9:30pm on a Wednesday, so I said yes and a conversation ensued there and then. Long story short, I was asked to drop by at Long Marston on my way back from an interview in Derby, and within about an hour of this I had a job at Vivarail.

Well I won’t bore you with the details but what a ride it has been working for Adrian these last 4 years at Vivarail. It’s had everything; at its peak we had designed and built 5 different variants of the ‘Class 230’ in approximately the same number of years, in amongst which we had moved production lock, stock and barrel from Long Marston to Southam, battled through the restrictions of Covid, and demonstrated a battery train at COP26; which in my view is the pinnacle moment of Adrian’s Vivarail legacy. Had all of this been planned out in advance, we would not have believed it to be possible. But somehow Adrian made things possible. He made you believe that anything was possible.

Of course, what goes up maybe had to come down, and to learn of Adrian’s devastating MND diagnosis in 2021 was a real shock, although in hindsight the physical signs had been there for a while. Some reading this will also know that Vivarail went into administration on 1st December 2022, which I know left Adrian with a real sense of loss, and he was battling to try and help save the company to the very end. But there is no enmity. Those that have had the privilege of working for Adrian in this, his last entrepreneurial venture, will have been indelibly touched by the experience (not to mention given a few extra grey hairs). In common with seemingly every team that Adrian brought together, the individuals involved were all united by a common goal, and a loyalty like I’ve never seen before.

Thanks, Adrian, for “making it so”, and may you rest in peace.

Dave Horton