Gerry Fiennes (full name: Gerard Francis Gisborne Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes OBE, MA) (7 June 1906 – 25 May 1985) was a British railway manager who rose through the ranks of the London and North Eastern Railway and later British Rail following graduation from Oxford University. British Rail fired him in 1967 for publishing an outspoken and critical book, I Tried to Run a Railway. Early life and family He was educated at Winchester College and Hertford College, Oxford and then joined the London and North Eastern Railway as a Traffic Apprentice in 1928. He was related to the actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, and the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Railway career After his apprenticeship his subsequent appointments included: Assistant Yardmaster, Whitemoor Yard, Cambridgeshire, 1932 Chief Controller, Cambridge, 1934. Various appointments at York, London Liverpool Street station, Edinburgh, and Shenfield. De facto District Operating Superintendent, Cambridge, during the early wartime. District Operating Superintendent, Nottingham, 1943. District Operating Superintendent, Stratford station, east London, 1944. Operating Superintendent, Eastern Region, British Rail, 1956–57. Line Traffic Manager, London King's Cross station, 1957–61. Chief Operating Officer, British Railways Board, 1961–63. Chairman of the Western Region Board and General Manager, Western Region BR, 1963–65. Chairman of the Eastern Region Board and General Manager, Eastern Region, BR, 1965–67. Starting in 1930 as a Traffic Apprentice, Fiennes gained a broad yet deep understanding of railway operations and economics. Fiennes' principles were that "the railway is judged by the comfort, speed, convenience, safety, punctuality and economy of its services". Consequently, he was prepared to discontinue services which could not be made to cover their costs and believed that unprofitable lines should be kept open only if there was a political will to underwrite the losses. On the other hand, Fiennes believed strongly in growing traffic and using resources intensively through aggressive scheduling and that, in order to compete with air and road, the average end-to-end speed of passenger trains had to be at least . Such speeds required much higher power locomotives than British Railways was ordering in large numbers at the time. As Line Traffic Manager of the East Coast Main Line in the late 1950s he was largely responsible for pushing for the purchase by BR of the 22 English Electric/ Napier "Deltic" locomotives in 1959 (in service 1961–82). These were deemed necessary as they were capable of prolonged running at , in order to provide the non-electrified East Coast