route with a level of service comparable with that of the electrified West Coast Main Line. As Chief Operating Officer at the British Railways Board at a time when a fleet of 100,000 freight wagons managed an average of just 20 journeys per year, he devised the "Merry-go-Round" (MGR) concept for continuous operation of coal and ore trains with loading and unloading on the move but was unable to overcome procrastination by his superiors and by the National Coal Board (which would have to invest in modern loading facilities) for several years. When finally introduced, MGR brought about drastic increases in efficiency and reductions in cost of bulk transport by rail. In one case, a proposed investment in 550 conventional wagons of 24,5 tons capacity was replaced with 44 MGR wagons of 32,5 tons capacity. On the Eastern Region in the mid-1960s he demonstrated that large savings could be made on unprofitable lines by use of the idea of a basic railway with less costly infrastructure, using track singling, unstaffed stations with larger car parks and fares collected on the trains. He was dismissed from British Rail in 1967 for publishing the autobiographical book I Tried to Run a Railway, which was outspoken about the management of British Rail and government policy changes and particularly critical of the frequent management re-organisations that the railways had gone through since nationalisation. Later life Following his main railway career, Fiennes was a director of Hargreaves Group between 1968 and 1976. He was a director of the railway publishers Ian Allan Ltd, who had published his book, and for whose rail industry magazines he had previously written extensively. He was Mayor of Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1976. Fiennes continued his association with railways by accepting an invitation to join the Board of Directors of the independent, narrow gauge, Ffestiniog Railway Company, in North Wales, on which he served between 1968 and 1974. Between 1970 and 1974 he was the Company's nominee to the Board of directors of the Ffestiniog Railway Society, the voluntary supporters' organisation. Notes References Bibliography </ref> 1906 births 1985 deaths Gerry Officers of the Order of the British Empire Mayors of places in Suffolk People educated at Winchester College 20th-century English businesspeople