Pop Idol judge and record producer Pete Waterman's passion for the railways looks set to bring scores of new jobs to Scotland.

Waterman, 57, who made his millions as a record producer and pop music impressario, is so fond of railways he has a 348-foot scale model of 1950s Leamington Spa - including stations, track and buildings - in the barn of his Cheshire farm.

He has owned British Rail's special trains unit since 1996 and owns the London & North Western Railway (L&NWR), the UK's biggest privately owned provider of rail maintenance services.

But now the multi-millionaire has revealed he has big plans for Scotland.

Waterman, the man who launched the pop career of Kylie Minogue with hits such as The Locomotion, has unveiled plans for a major investment in his railway engineering base in Irvine, Ayrshire, and is understood to be planning to open a L&NWR depot in Edinburgh.

The planned depot, likely to open next year, forms part of an investment in the tens of millions that will see L&NWR's staff increase from 150 to around 300.

L&NWR maintains locomotives, wagons, coaching stock and refurbishes carriages on behalf or rail operators throughout the country. "The Irvine venture is a sprat to catch a mackerel," said Waterman cryptically.

Waterman's Irvine plant is already producing bespoke plastic parts for 7mm and 10mm gauge model railway engines, and Waterman believes it will be sufficiently strong to see off competition from Chinese manufacturers.

"What we're trying to do in Ayrshire is create engineering excellence. We actually do some stuff for the real railway, but we're trying to create a skills base in Scotland that is able to break the Chinese experience - where most of this stuff, including Hornby, is now made."

His JustLikeTheRealThing group now owns a string of specialist model railway and locomotive making companies across the UK and he also has a museum containing 27,000 toy trains in Crewe.

The Irvine machine shop uses 3D computer generated graphics to develop parts and prototype parts for model trains.

The Pop Idol judge worked as a trainee boilersmith on the railways in his younger days. The son of a Coventry aircraft fitter, he left school at 15 without having learned to read or write and his first job was as a boilersmith for British Rail at Wolverhampton.

"Once you've been bitten by the rail bug, it is with you forever," Waterman said.

Copyright 2004 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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