GO NORTH WEST

ALAN MILLAR meets some of the team who set up this new business to acquire part of First Manchester and make it work as a freestanding company from Day One — a project its leader likens to the launch of a spacecraft

The first vehicle repainted in Go North West livery, Alexander Dennis Enviro400 33841 (SN14 TTE), on cross-city service 41 between Middleton and Sale.

When you become a senior manager within a Go-Ahead company and have been identified as a candidate for career progression, you should be prepared for a life-changing call from the chief executive officer, David Brown.

Giving his presidential address to the Omnibus Society earlier this year, Go South Coast managing director Andrew Wickham recalled such a conversation when he was operations director there and was offered the chance of becoming managing director of the newly acquired Plymouth Citybus.

For David Cutts, operations director at Go- Ahead London since 2006, the call came last Christmas when Brown let him in on the secret that the group was negotiating to buy First Manchester’s Queens Road depot.

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