The latest winner at the Global Light Rail Awards (held in London at the start of October) is Tony Young who received the Judges Special Award in recognition of his 50 years of service to the light rail and rail industries.
Tony was rewarded with the award having been a leading light in reintroducing trams to the streets of the UK with the first phase of the Manchester Metrolink system. He led the technical team in Manchester and has recently released his autobiography “The Tramcar will Return: The Autobiography of a tram man”. He was initially a civil engineer before moving into transport planning. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Chartered Institute of Logistic and Transport and a Churchill Fellow.
In announcing the award, host of the ceremony, Nicholas Owen, said: “Tonight, we honour someone of the highest calibre, without whom the revival of light rail in the UK might genuinely not have happened. He has given a lifetime of service to the transport industry as a planner and thinker, and this is what his former boss said about him: ‘Our prospering street-running tramway (in Manchester) has gone from being a gleam in his eye in the early 1980s to become the beating heart of our city, and everyone ought to acknowledge that it was his brainchild’.”
very well deserved. Tony Stevenson.