OREANDA-NEWS. Having joined Railtrack as a graduate, Jo has built extensive experience in operational roles and has recently served as a route managing director and then a director in the strategy and planning team.

Jo will become a member of Network Rail's executive committee, replacing Paul Plummer who leaves Network Rail later this month to lead the Rail Delivery Group.

Mark Carne, chief executive, said: "I am delighted to announce the appointment of Jo as director of network strategy and capacity planning. She brings strategic planning and deep industry knowledge and has developed strong relationships with stakeholders including the department for transport and local authorities."

Born in London and now living in Halifax, Jo read biology at Imperial College London and followed it up with an MSc in passenger transport management.

She joined the rail industry graduate training scheme in 1995 and worked in a number of operational management roles in Network Rail for the first years of her career. Jo was head of west coast 2008 where she was the interface between the project team deliver the west coast upgrade and the train operating companies that use the line, ensuring Network Rail and customers were ready for the introduction of the new timetable in December 2008. She then became route managing director of LNW route, responsible for the busiest mixed traffic railway in Europe and then most recently moved into strategic planning.

About Network Rail

Network Rail owns, manages and develops Britain’s railway – the 20,000 miles of track, 40,000 bridges and viaducts, and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations (the largest of which we also run). In partnership with train operators we help people take more than 1.6bn journeys by rail every year - double the number of 1996 - and move hundreds of millions of tonnes of freight, saving almost 8m lorry journeys. We’re investing ?38bn in the railway by 2019 to deliver more frequent, more reliable, safer services and brighter and better stations.