Obituary: James King, development expert who championed rail service improvements

Born: 25 May, 1951, in Edinburgh. Died: 12 June, 2011, in North Berwick, aged 60

GAZING from his bedroom window in Berwick’s Redcroft Hotel, James King’s passion for railways was ignited as the steam trains puffed by. Just a small boy in the 1950s, those majestic locomotives he watched on childhood holidays marked the start of a lifelong fascination with trains and the rail network.

It led to a constant quest to improve services and facilities for travellers and to his status as the voice of Scottish rail passengers.

Today, the contribution he made while championing Scotland on the national body Passenger Focus and working with Rail Action Group East of Scotland, is being recognised with the unveiling of a commemorative plaque at North Berwick station, from where he often harangued ScotRail bosses over the late-running of his regular Edinburgh Waverley service.

The son of John King – whose family ran Edinburgh brewery Campbell, Hope & King – and Margaret Bannatyne, he was raised in Lasswade, where he was educated at the local primary school before attending the capital’s Melville College.

After graduating with a BA in economics and marketing from Strathclyde University, in 1972 he left Scotland for London and a career in advertising.

There he joined Grey Advertising, moving on to French Gold Abbott and then Abbott Mead Vickers and worked on accounts that included the British Army, British Caledonian and Volvo.

Seven years later, in 1979, he returned to Scotland, as business development director at Hall Advertising in Edinburgh before opening an Edinburgh office for the Ogilvy & Mather agency.

He went on to work south of the Border again, on marketing and business development projects in Maidenhead, Berkshire for business consultancy Oasis, which later became Sybase, and also travelled widely.

In 1996, he founded his own company, Marketing Principals International, and worked with a range of growth companies supported by Scottish Enterprise.

He also worked for the Falkland Islands, developing economic strategy for the government there, including a new approach to eco-tourism. He visited the remote South Atlantic islands several times and always returned inspired.

Latterly, he was working on a branding exercise for the Outer Hebrides, another area he loved. Although he had been concentrating on his career and his railway passion may have taken a bit of a back seat, particularly when he was in the south and enjoying sailing on the Solent, it was by no means forgotten.

A member of the Scottish Railway Preservation Society, he was a steam engine enthusiast and often went on weekend steam train outings.

In 2002, he was appointed a member of the then Rail Passengers Committee for Scotland, having previously been vice-chairman of the Rail Action Group East of Scotland, and became a founding board member of Passenger Focus.

As the latter’s Scottish board member, he often appeared in the media commenting with authority – and always with a fair and measured voice – on a wide range of railway-related issues.

His extensive business and marketing expertise was enormously valued within the organisation where his responsibilities included membership of the British Transport Police Authority.

An energetic and tireless campaigner, while living in North Berwick he was responsible for the introduction of two new mid-evening services from Edinburgh, the 18:45 and the 20:43.

He also persuaded ScotRail, in 2009, to provide an additional 23:37 service on Friday and Saturday nights during Edinburgh festivals. A true gentleman, who had enjoyed a glittering career despite battling two brain tumours in his 20s, he was warm, thoughtful and amusing in company and highly-focused, organised and utterly professional in his working life.

He also enjoyed various sporting pursuits including car rallying, sailing, skiing and shooting. Another interest was fine wines, of which he was a connoisseur. While in London he launched a wine business and claimed the UK record for shoehorning the most cases of wine into a VW Golf – 32 apparently.

He was also a committed Christian and an elder at North Berwick’s St Andrew Blackadder Church of Scotland.

Divorced from his first wife, Mandy Ferrand, he is survived by his wife of 28 years Katharine, known as Katie, whom he met at Hall Advertising. Though they never had children, he was an enthusiastic godparent a number of times over and had two much-loved cats, Felix and Archie, the latter taking his master’s middle name.

And just this summer, his enthusiasm for the railways undimmed, King had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new Class 380 trains.

They made their passenger-carrying debut on the North Berwick route on Saturday, 11 June. James King died early the following morning. ALISON SHAW