Gerard Fiennes

Gerry Fiennes was a British railway manager who rose through the ranks of the London and North Eastern Railway and later British Rail. However British Rail fired him in 1967 for publishing an outspoken, critical, and autobiographical book I Tried to Run a Railway.

His full name is Gerard Francis Gisborne Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes. Gerry Fiennes's career in railway work began after graduating from Oxford University. He started as a Traffic Apprentice in 1928. In 1965–67 he already was Chairman of the Eastern Region Board and General Manager, Eastern Region.

After the book I Tried to Run a Railway was published, he was instantly fired from British Rail. His anger was directed at the government, the board, legal advisers, health, and safety (as it was conceived); in fact, anyone who got in the way of managers' management.

He was particularly critical of the frequent management re-organizations that the railways had gone through since nationalization.

Following his railway career, Fiennes was a director of Hargreaves Group between 1968 and 1976. He was a director of the railway publishers Ian Allan Ltd, who had published his book, and for whose rail industry magazines he had previously written extensively. He was Mayor of Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1976.

Gerry Fiennes continued his association with railways by accepting an invitation to join the Board of Directors of the independent, narrow gauge, Ffestiniog Railway Company, in North Wales, on which he served between 1968 and 1974.