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MEET THE TEAM

Katie Silvester: Editor
Silvester is a business-to-business magazine professional with a long track record working in the printing, education and health industries. Before joining Rail Professional, she was the London-based editor of SecEd, the leading weekly newspaper for the secondary education sector, which she helped to launch in 2003.

A passionate advocate of public transport, Silvester has travelled all over the world by rail. When not travelling on trains, her favoured method of transport is her bicycle.

Chris Randall: Associate editor
Randall was Rail Professional's editor when the magazine launched in 1996. His pithy, direct style of rail news reporting earned him plaudits – and the occasional enemy – as he sought to shape a railway magazine that told the truth about the rail business. After a spell as associate editor of Rail, he has returned to Rail Professional as business editor.

A rail professional himself, Randall spent 10 years in senior management in the industry, including the role of public affairs manager at South Central covering the period of the Cowden rail accident and the takeover in 1996 by the French transport operator Connex. He left the industry shortly after privatisation and has become one of the leading writers on rail business issues in Britain.

Paul Clifton: Contributor and transport correspondent for BBC South
In October 2005, Clifton was named CILT Transport Journalist of the Year for the second year running, making him the only person to have won the prestigious award in successive years.

As BBC transport correspondent for southern England since the early 1990s he has appeared on a wide range of BBC television and radio programmes, including the Today programme, Six and Ten O’clock News, Newsnight and most frequently on South Today and other regional programmes. His credits include 16 BBC2 documentaries on transport.

Clifton is a regular columnist for Rail Professional and is a judge of the annual HSBC Rail Business Awards. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Highways and Transportation and of the Royal Geographical Society, as well as being a Chartered Geographer.

Peter Plisner: Contributor and transport correspondent for BBC Midlands
Plisner has been in journalism for the last 20 years and has specialised in transport for over half of that time. His broadcasting career started in local radio in Cambridgeshire. Later, he worked for Independent Radio News and several other major London-based broadcasters. In his current role he works across all BBC outlets, including radio, TV and the corporation’s rapidly growing online service, BBCi.

Over the past five years, Plisner has reported on major rail news stories including the troubled project to modernise the west coast main line; the construction and introduction of Virgin’s Pendolino tilting trains; and the problems of increasing congestion at Birmingham’s New Street station.

Away from work Plisner enjoys photography and walking.

Alan Whitehouse: Contributor and transport correspondent for BBC North
Whitehouse has been writing and broadcasting on transport for over a quarter of a century. He was the first-ever transport correspondent for the Yorkshire Post, and ran a campaign against BR’s proposed closure of the Settle to Carlisle line (which is still open today).

He became BBC North’s transport correspondent in 1991. He has made many contributions not just on regional TV news, but to the BBC network bulletins too, covering rail privatisation and breaking the story of how MTL, winner of the Regional Railways North East franchise, planned to cut staff by 40 per cent.

In the wake of the crisis brought on by the Hatfield crash he broke the story on Radio 4’s Today programme that Railtrack’s own internal assessment was that it would take five years to recover from gauge corner cracking.

In 12 years with the BBC Whitehouse has also completed three full-length radio documentaries looking at Railtrack’s record on maintaining the network, the state of rail freight and the deteriorating finances of train operating companies and a two-part documentary on the legacy of the Beeching era.

Whitehouse was named the first Transport Journalist of the Year in the CIT awards in 1991. More recently he was named Broadcaster of the Year in the Northern Business Journalism Awards. He lives in West Yorkshire, where he is happy to remain.

Paul Coleman: Contributor
Coleman joined Rail Professional in 2004. During a 20-year career in journalism, he has produced features on UK manufacturing, the rail industry, local government and crime and policing that have appeared in a range of newspapers, magazines and specialist media. He has also worked for BBC Television and with independent TV production companies on current affairs documentaries shown on the BBC and Channel 4.

A Manchester University graduate, Coleman is now based in London, his birthplace, where he struggles with learning to play classical guitar. His interest in transport and maritime stems from his father who was in the RAF, his grandfather who was in the merchant navy and his great-grandfather, who was one of the first drivers of a motorised taxi-cab in London.